Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel on Tuesday announced felony charges against 16 Michigan residents for their roles in an alleged false electors scheme intended to help then-President Donald Trump overturn his loss in the 2020 U.S. election.
The 16 Republicans in the state were accused of submitting a phony slate of electors in hopes of flipping the winner of Michigan in the presidential election from Democrat Joe Biden to Trump.
"The false electors' actions undermined the public's faith in the integrity of our elections and, we believe, also plainly violated the laws by which we administer our elections in Michigan," Nessel, a Democrat, said in a statement.
The charges include forgery, conspiracy to commit forgery and conspiracy to commit election forgery, each carrying a possible penalty of five to 14 years in prison.
The defendants were alleged to have met covertly in the basement of the Michigan Republican Party headquarters in December 2020, and signed their names to multiple certificates stating they were the "duly elected and qualified electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America for the State of Michigan," according to Nessel.
"These false documents were then transmitted to the United States Senate and National Archives in a coordinated effort to award the state's electoral votes to the candidate of their choosing, in place of the candidates actually elected by the people of Michigan," Nessel said.
Multiple audits showed that Biden had received more than 2.8 million votes in Michigan, about 154,000 more votes than Trump, Nessel added.
"That the effort failed and democracy prevailed does not erase the crimes of those who enacted the false electors plot," Nessel said.
