Michigan AG charges 16 ‘fake electors’ in 2020 scheme

Michigan’s attorney general Tuesday charged sixteen “fake electors” for their alleged roles in a plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election. 

Each defendant faces six different charges, from conspiracy to commit forgery to conspiracy to uttering and publishing. 

Prosecutors in court filings alleged the individuals met in the basement of the Michigan Republican Party headquarters and signed documents claiming they were the electors for the state, which was won in 2020 by then-presidential candidate Biden, and later showed up to the Michigan Capitol.

“That was a lie,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) said in a video announcing the charges.

“They weren’t the duly elected and qualified electors, and each of the defendants knew it,” she continued. “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.”

Nessel further alleged some of the 16 individuals showed up to the grounds of the state capitol and asserted the right to cast ballots as electors.

If convicted on all counts, the group of fake electors could face more than 60 years in prison, though such a sentence is unlikely. Nessel said she had not ruled out charges for additional defendants.

The fake electors scheme, spearheaded by Trump lawyer John Eastman, relied on former Vice President Mike Pence refusing to certify electoral votes cast for Biden and instead counting groups of Trump-supporting electors in battleground states.

Fake electors also allegedly convened in Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Nevada and Wisconsin, claiming without basis that they were “duly elected” electors from their states. 

On Jan. 6, 2021 — the day of the election certification — Pence declined to go along with the plan, writing in a letter that his “oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not.”

A pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol later that day in protest of the election results and Pence’s refusal to overturn them.