LANSING — Michigan’s so-called false electors case is over and defendants will not stand trial after prosecutors failed to prove 15 Republicans knowingly committed a crime by signing a document incorrectly claiming President Donald Trump won the state’s 2020 presidential election, a judge ruled Tuesday.
“This is a fraud case, and (you) have to prove intent,” Lansing 54-A District Court Judge Kristen Simmons told a packed courtroom, “and I don’t believe that there’s evidence sufficient to prove intent.”
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel had charged the defendants — including former Republican National Committee member Kathy Berden and former Michigan GOP Chair Meshawn Maddock — with eight felony counts, including forgery charges Simmons said pertained more to property crimes than the facts of the case.
The question of whether Biden actually won Michigan was a legitimate question. There were so many irregularities in the COVID election (mail-in ballots of questionable origin, implausible numbers of 110+ old Pennsylvania voters requesting absentee ballots, clear evidence of ballot harvestimg, some clear-cut fraud involving a California friend's non-citizen wife shown as voting by mail, whose votes were counted the day after the election when she did not vote) that a person could genuinely believe the election results were as trustworthy as Biden's autopen pardons. Providing an alternate set of electors in case Congress decided to investigate these iregularities seems a legitimate action. If not for the J6ers idiocy, I think it possible that Congress might have at least asked questions much as the contested 1876 election involved challenges to the results from several states. (Thanks J6ers for guaranteeing President Autopen and likely the Ukraine War.)
