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GOP
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Michigan AG Dana Nessel (D) has filed formal charges against the 16 fake electors who falsely certified that they were the true presidential electors in 2020. Nessel has proof on paper that they did this and Michigan law is clear that filing a false certification is a felony (forging an official document). Some of them may flip, but all of them are likely to be spending at least some time rent-free as guests of the State of Michigan. The ones who flip may get shorter sentences, though.
But Michigan wasn't the only state where this particular crime took place. In Arizona, the new AG, Kris Mayes (D), is looking into it, but she has been on the job only 6 months. Wisconsin is another one. The state AG there, Josh Kaul (D), has been very lax about pursuing the fake electors, even though he has been AG since 2020. However, one Wisconsin lawyer, Jeff Mandell, has been a real pitbull about going after the fake electors, despite Kaul's reluctance. Various official commissions have also brushed him off, but he just kept going. Finally he gave up on them and filed a civil lawsuit against the fake electors on behalf of two of the actual electors and some others. It seeks $2.4 million in damages. The two actual electors probably have standing to sue because if the fake electors had been accepted, they would have lost their status as presidential electors, which although not a paid job, is a great honor. After all, in all of U.S. history, fewer than 20,000 people have actually voted for president.
Here is a list of the fake electors:
Spindell is particularly obnoxious. He has bragged about how he was very successful in suppressing election turnout in Black and Latino areas of the state, especially Milwaukee. Also named in the suit are Jim Troupis, Trump's point man on election challenges, and Kenneth Chesebro, the mastermind behind key aspects of implementing the fake elector scheme. Chesebro was in the room in Wisconsin when the fake electors forged the election certificates.
Having two slates of electors filed has happened once before. In 1960, just after Hawaii had become a state, the election was so close that on the day the certificates had to be filed, no one knew who had won the state. Both slates got together in the same room, with the governor and local media present, and both sets of certificates were signed in public. In contrast, the fake Wisconsin electors met in secret, with armed guards protecting them. And they did this after the state Supreme Court ruled that Joe Biden won the state. While the fake electors will surely bring up Hawaii as a precedent, that is completely bogus since the fake Wisconsin electors met and signed after the state Supreme Court ruling.
It is possible that Special Counsel Jack Smith is already looking at all the fake electors. It is also possible that Kaul will now be motivated to get on the stick because if Mandell wins his civil suit, Kaul will look very bad for not even trying. Mandell's case has been assigned to Dane County Circuit Judge Frank Remington. The electors asked him to allow each elector to be tried in his or her own county instead of in one case. Remington shot that down real fast. Remington also set a date for the trial: Sept. 3, 2024. The trial is expected to take a month. That makes it entirely possible that roughly one month before the 2024 presidential election, "Fake Trump Electors Found Guilty of Trying to Subvert 2020 Election" could be on the front pages around the country. The person who said there's no such thing as bad publicity never pondered that scenario. Also, if Trump were to try that trick again in 2024, it could be a tad harder to find people willing to risk being fake electors. (V)