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As 2023 got underway, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel made unsubtle comments about her state’s Republican “fake electors” from the 2020 election cycle. The Michigan prosecutor declared in early January that there was “clear evidence” to pursue criminal charges against the pro-Trump partisans who pretended to be real electors.
Nessel also explained on "The Rachel Maddow Show" that while she had referred the matter to federal prosecutors, state charges remained possible. “That type of activity can’t go without any consequences,” the Democratic state attorney general said at the time.
This was not hollow rhetoric. NBC News reported:
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced Tuesday that she has filed charges against 16 people who signed paperwork falsely claiming that President Donald Trump had won the 2020 election as part of a scheme to overturn the results.
This is the first time fake electors in any state have been criminally charged, and it's separate from the civil case filed earlier this year against the Michigan Republicans.
These are not misdemeanors. Each of the GOP defendants has been charged with several felonies, including conspiracy to commit forgery, forgery, conspiracy to commit election law forgery, and election law forgery.
In case anyone needs a refresher, the Republican efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election were multifaceted, but among the striking partisan tactics was the fake electors scheme: GOP officials and operatives in key states created forged election materials and sent the documents to, among others, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. Archivist, as if the documents were legitimate. They were not.
As part of the fake process, Michigan’s fake electors met in the basement of the Republican Party’s headquarters in Lansing for their own ersatz event after the 2020 race. It was at that point when the fake electors allegedly signed their names to multiple certificates stating that they were the “duly elected and qualified electors for president and Vice President of the United States of America for the state of Michigan.”
As Nessel argued on Tuesday, “That was a lie. They weren’t the duly elected and qualified electors, and each of the defendants knew it. They carried out these actions with the hope and belief that the electoral votes of Michigan’s 2020 election would be awarded to the candidate of their choosing instead of the candidate that Michigan voters actually chose.”
The state attorney general added, “This plan to reject the will of the voters and undermine democracy was fraudulent and legally baseless. The false electors actions undermine the public’s faith in the integrity of our elections and not only violated the spirit of the laws, enshrining and defending our democracy, but we believe also plainly violated the laws by which we administer our elections in Michigan and peaceably transfer power in America.”
As regular readers might recall, the Justice Department confirmed last year that it was also examining this part of the larger controversy as part of its criminal investigation, but it appears that Nessel’s office is no longer prepared to wait to see what federal prosecutors decide to do.
As for the road ahead, the defendants in Michigan will soon be arraigned, but that won’t necessarily represent the end of the probe. “While today we are announcing charges against these 16 defendants,” the state attorney general concluded, “this remains an ongoing investigation, and our department has not ruled out potential charges against additional defendants.”