LANSING, Mich. (AP) — A Michigan judge dismissed criminal charges Tuesday against a group of people who were accused of attempting to falsely certify President Donald Trump as the winner of the 2020 election in the battleground state, a major blow to prosecutors as similar cases in four other states have been muddied with setbacks.
District Court Judge Kristen D. Simmons said in a court hearing that the 15 Republicans accused will not face trial. The case has dragged through the courts since Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, announced the charges over two years ago.
Simmons said she saw no intent to commit fraud in the defendants’ actions. Whether they were “right, wrong or indifferent,” they “seriously believed” there were problems with the election, the judge said.
“I believe they were executing their constitutional right to seek redress,” Simmons said.
Each member of the group, which included a few high profile members of the Republican Party in Michigan, faced eight charges of forgery and conspiracy to commit election forgery. The top felony charges carried a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison.
Supporters, friends and family crowded in the hallway outside the courtroom cheered when the judge said the cases would be dismissed. Defendants leaving the courtroom cried and hugged friends and family. One woman wept as she hugged another and said, “We did it.”
Investigators said the group met at the Michigan GOP headquarters in December of 2020 and signed a document falsely stating they were the state’s “duly elected and qualified electors.” President Joe Biden won Michigan by nearly 155,000 votes, a result confirmed by a GOP-led state Senate investigation in 2021.
Electors are part of the 538-member Electoral College that officially elects the president of the United States. In 48 states, electors vote for the candidate who won the popular vote. In Nebraska and Maine, elector votes are awarded based on congressional district and statewide results.
One man accused in the Michigan case had the charges against him dropped after he agreed to cooperate with the state attorney general’s office in October 2023. The other 15 defendants pleaded not guilty and have maintained that their actions were not illegal.
Reaction to the dismissal
Prominent Michigan MAGA activist and former Michigan Republican Party Co-Chair Meshawn Maddock was one of the accused. Her attorney, Nicholas Somberg, told reporters after the hearing that the case brought by the attorney general's office was a waste of money and a “malicious prosecution.”
“There needs to be major consequences for the people who brought this," he said.
“We all knew from day one that we had done nothing illegal or wrong," Maddock said in a written statement. "Yes, we volunteered to be an Alternate Elector in support of Donald J. Trump. That is not a crime, as much as Nessel wanted it to be one.”
Nessel called Simmons' ruling “disappointing” and a “very wrong decision” during a virtual news conference and said evidence would support criminal charges if the case had been brought before a jury. She said the group members knew their actions did not follow proper election procedure and specifically sought to circumvent the rules.
“They knew they were not electors,” Nessel said of the group. “They knew Donald Trump lost, but then they lied anyway. And that is a crime.”
Nessel said her office is considering appealing the decision to a higher court, which she could do. But the legal threshold to overturn the ruling is high under Michigan law and would center on whether Simmons abused her discretion in dismissing the charges after hearing evidence.
Judge says the case was about intent
Simmons, who was originally appointed by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2019 and reelected to her nonpartisan position the next year, took nearly a year to say whether there was sufficient evidence to bring the cases to trial following a series of lengthy preliminary hearings. In her remarks Tuesday, Simmons said the case was not about who won the 2020 election, but about the intent of the people charged.
“This is not an election interference case,” she said.
The judge noted that the group appeared in public about the effort and posed for photos after the meeting.
“Typically people who are seeking to defraud or deceive the public do not gather and make a spectacle. That would be weird,” Simmons said, prompting chuckles in the courtroom.
The judge said Maddock appeared to have direct contact with the Trump campaign and that she could have entertained her culpability, but Maddock’s public statements at the time led the judge to believe she was seeking “redress” from her state senators in presenting them with an “alternate” choice of electors.
“The prosecution would like the court to believe that these named defendants were savvy or sophisticated enough to understand fully the electoral process,” Simmons said in the hearing. “This alternate document doesn’t state it’s an official document of the state of Michigan, doesn’t contain a certificate of vote, no one attempted to forge the governor’s signature, no one attempted to create a fake seal.”
Kahla Crino, an assistant attorney general, contested the judge’s finding on intent, saying to reporters that the group was aligned with the actual language of the document they signed, it was not contingent on the election results and it “directly impaired on legitimate government function.”
Around two dozen people gathered outside of the courtroom Tuesday morning, bearing signs in support of the defendants. One read, “End political lawfare.” Defendants and their lawyers crowded into a small courtroom in downtown Lansing for the hearing, with a handful appearing over a video call. Two of the defendants’ attorneys said their clients could not appear because of medical reasons. Most of the accused are over the age of 70.
Outside court after the hearing, Republican state Rep. Matt Maddock, husband to Meshawn Maddock, promised “retribution” against the attorney general.
“They’re going to pay for what they did to these people,” he told reporters.
Marian Sheridan, one of the people charged, said her life has been on hold for two years as she waited for the judge's decision. She insists the plan was to act as a “backup."
“I've always been proud of my reputation,” she said. “In such a short time, you have friends and family who believe somehow that you are a criminal.”
Prosecutors in Nevada, Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona have also filed criminal charges related to the fake electors scheme. None of the cases have neared the trial stage and many have been bogged down by procedural and appellate delays.
The effort to secure fake electors was central to the federal indictment against Trump that was abandoned earlier this year shortly before Trump took office for his second term.
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Associated Press writer Ed White in Detroit contributed to this report.