A judge has dismissed criminal charges against 15 Republicans who attempted to pose as members of the electoral college in order to swing the 2020 presidential election to Donald Trump.
The group believed Trump’s false assertions that there was widespread voter fraud and attempted to install themselves in place of their Democratic Party opponents.
According to prosecutors, they met in secret and signed their names to documents claiming that they were chosen to represent Michigan.
On Tuesday, District Court Judge Kristen D Simmons dismissed forgery, conspiracy and other charges against the group and ruled they had legally exercised their constitutional rights.
The judge said the group was not “savvy or sophisticated enough to understand fully the electoral process” and did not attempt to forge official seals or signatures.
“[They] sincerely believed, for some reason, that there were some serious irregularities with the election or with the voting,” the judge said. “This was their belief, and their actions were prompted by this belief.”
The judge said the actions of the defendants, which included several prominent state Republican Party officials, did not justify the criminal charges which were filed in 2023.
After a prolonged vote counting process in November 2020, due in part to new rules driven by the Covid pandemic, Trump lost the vote but never conceded.
Instead, he urged his supporters to contest the result. Protests and marches culminated in a riot and the storming of the US Capitol building on 6 January 2021, the day that the votes of the electoral college – the body that ultimately decides each presidential election after the popular vote is tallied – were being officially counted.
In Michigan, a crucial swing state, Joe Biden won 2.8 million votes to Trump’s tally of just under 2.65 million. Under the winner-take-all system in place in nearly all US states, Biden won all 16 of Michigan’s electoral votes on his way to an overall 306-232 victory.
In a video statement after the judge’s decision, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, said the ruling was “disappointing” and that her office would consider filing an appeal.
“This was, in my belief, a co-ordinated attempt to overturn the will of the American people and reinstate Donald Trump as president, despite Joe Biden’s victory in the election to that office,” she said.
John Freeman, a lawyer for one of the defendants, told local media after the decision that the ruling was a “a true testament to the way the system is supposed to work”.
He said the case was “a politically motivated witch hunt”.
Other criminal cases involving people who posed as electoral college voters are pending in states including Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin.
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