LANSING, Mich. — The actions of 16 Republicans who signed a false certificate claiming Donald Trump won Michigan in 2020 deserve a "close look" from law enforcement investigators, a former state elections director said.
Chris Thomas, who served in the role for 36 years under both Democratic and Republican secretaries of state, made the comments Wednesday during a press event for the Defend Democracy Project, a nonprofit. It comes after a U.S. House select committee used a public hearing to examine the efforts of Trump and his supporters in multiple battleground states to reverse the outcome of the November 2020 election.
The so-called "alternative" electors in Michigan falsely claimed that Trump had won the state and signed a certificate on Dec. 14, 2020, that was submitted to the National Archives and the U.S. Senate in an attempt to overturn Democrat Joe Biden's victory.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, has previously suggested the false electors violated multiple laws, including one against election-related forgery. Michigan policy bans making or publishing "a false document with the intent to defraud." The potential penalties are a fine of up to $1,000 or up to five years behind bars.
Asked if he believes the false electors in Michigan broke the election forgery law, Thomas, who's also a lawyer, responded that he wasn't sure but their actions come "very close."
"These are official documents that are prepared and sent off to the … National Archivist," Thomas said.
He added later: "I think it deserves a very close look to see whether or not it would actually be a forgery."
The election law's "intent to defraud" language could be a hurdle if prosecutors took up the case.
Some of the Trump electors in Michigan have said they didn't read what they were signing when they met in state GOP headquarters and signed documents on Dec. 14, 2020, the day the Electoral College was convening in the Capitol.
"Did I really read it and understand it? Probably not," said John Haggard, a Trump elector from Charlevoix, in an interview Monday.
Haggard also said that he believed Trump won Michigan's election, which he lost to Biden by 154,000 votes, and that his First Amendment rights protected his ability to sign the false certificate.
Another of the 16 Trump electors, Michele Lundgren of Wayne County, said on Tuesday that she hadn't been offered the first page of the two-page certificate to read. The second page mainly included spots for signatures while the first page featured false statements like saying the Trump electors had "convened and organized" in the state Capitol at 2 p.m. Dec. 14, 2020.
That was a potentially key false statement because Michigan law required the electors to "convene in the Senate chamber at the Capitol" — something of which lawyers advising Trump supporters' effort were aware. The building was closed to the public at that time, and some of the Republican electors had been blocked from entering.
Others signing the false electors document were Meshawn Maddock, current co-chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party, Kathy Berden, the state's GOP national committeewoman, and Stan Grot, the Shelby Township clerk.
"I didn’t do anything wrong, so I don’t expect to hear from them. I’m just a little guy from Shelby Township.” Grot said when asked on Monday if he had been contacted by investigators.
In January, Nessel referred a probe into the false electors to federal prosecutors. On June 1, she told The Detroit News she had read stories indicating federal authorities were investigating the electors in multiple states and were "interviewing people in Michigan for that."
This week, Kathy Schuette, spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in Michigan's Western District, declined to comment when asked about the electors and wouldn't confirm or deny whether an investigation was occurring.
However, Republican Gerald Wall of Roscommon said in a Wednesday interview with The Detroit News that he had been visited by someone with Federal Bureau of Investigation and someone from the National Archives in May.
Wall, who's now 85, was supposed to be one of the 16 Trump electors in Michigan but was ill at the time and was replaced on the false slate.
The people who showed up at his home unannounced in May interviewed him for about 45 minutes, Wall said. And they gave him a summons to appear in Washington, D.C. Wall told them he wouldn't be going to Washington, D.C.
Authorities' stop at Wall's home was first reported by CNN.
On Wednesday, Norm Eisen, who served as special counsel to the Democrat-led U.S. House Judiciary Committee from 2019 to 2020, said the electors' actions merited an investigation.
Both federal and state laws should be examined along with the particulars of what the various electors believed, said Eisen, who practiced criminal law for three decades.
"I certainly would not rule out the prospect that there are criminal violations in one or more of the seven states where these false electors submitted slates," Eisen said.
Both Thomas and Eisen participated in a Wednesday press event for the Defend Democracy Project.
Their comments focused on Tuesday's hearing by the U.S. House's Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.
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