LANSING, Mich. — Attorney General Dana Nessel's investigators have interviewed Laura Cox, the former chairwoman of the Michigan GOP, and other prominent Republican officials as they examine whether 16 Donald Trump supporters broke the law by signing a certificate falsely claiming he won the 2020 election.
Two years after the Trump electors convened in the basement of GOP headquarters in Lansing for a faux signing ceremony, Nessel's office is pressing on with a criminal probe that has already entangled former party officials. Cox, who served as GOP chairwoman for a two-year term covering 2019 and 2020, said she was subpoenaed for an interview in late September.
Cox, the wife of former Attorney General Mike Cox, declined to provide additional details. She wasn't present for the meeting of the Trump electors on Dec. 14, 2020, but held the party's top job at the time. She didn't agree with the strategy of submitting the certificate stating Trump won.
Nessel's spokeswoman, Kimberly Bush, wouldn't confirm or deny that Cox had been subpoenaed or explain why it apparently happened three months before Nessel publicly announced in January that her investigation into the Trump electors restarted.
"As you know, we have reopened the investigation into the false slate of electors," Bush said on Friday. "However, because the matter is ongoing, we cannot comment further."
The Attorney General's office has also interviewed in recent weeks multiple other Republicans who either worked for the party or were present for the electors meeting on Dec. 14, 2020, according to two sources with knowledge of the sessions but who declined to be identified because of the ongoing investigation.
Nessel, a Democrat, was reelected to a second four-year term as attorney general in November. On Jan. 6, the two-year anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, she announced that her office had reopened its probe into the Trump electors.
In January 2022, she referred the matter to federal prosecutors. But she later reversed course citing documents uncovered by a U.S. House committee that investigated the failed insurrection. Nessel said in January 2023 she was "a little worried that over a year has passed" since her referral and she wasn't sure what the federal government was going to do.
The group of 16 Michigan Republicans signed a document that was submitted by someone to the National Archives and Congress, falsely alleging that Trump won the state's 16 electoral votes. In reality, Democrat Joe Biden won the state by 3 percentage points or 154,000 votes.
The so-called "alternate" electors met inside the Michigan Republican Party headquarters in downtown Lansing the same day Michigan's actual presidential electors participated in an official ceremony inside the state Capitol.
Some Trump supporters hoped the false certificate in Michigan and similar documents in other battleground states would help him challenge and potentially overturn his loss to Biden when Congress met to certify the results on Jan. 6, 2021.
High stakes probe
Among the 16 Michigan Republicans who signed the certificate were former Michigan Republican Party Co-Chairwoman Meshawn Maddock, Republican National Committeewoman Kathy Berden and the party's grassroots vice-chairwoman, Marian Sheridan.
In February, in response to a civil lawsuit, lawyers for the Republican electors contended if Congress or a court had eventually found Trump won the election, the GOP electors' votes could have counted.
Maddock previously said she fought to seat the Trump electors because the "Trump campaign asked us to do that."
Other Republicans whose names appeared on the false certificate have said they didn't know what they were signing. Michele Lundgren of Detroit has maintained she thought she was putting her name on a sign-in sheet.
"They said, 'Sign this paper,'" Lundgren said.
Nessel has previously argued the electors possibly violated state laws against forgery of a public record and election-related forgery. Michigan election law bans someone from knowingly making or publishing a false document "with the intent to defraud."
The certificate the GOP electors signed claimed they "convened and organized" in the state Capitol, which they didn't. Some of the electors walked three blocks to the Capitol after meeting in state GOP headquarters, but they were denied access to the building.
Differing documents
The Democrat-led U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol first revealed testimony Cox made to the panel's employees in June during one of its public hearings.
Later, at the beginning of the year, the committee released a transcript of Cox's full interview, in which she stated she had concerns about the idea of Republicans signing certificates falsely claiming Trump won the 2020 election.
"I just want to be clear, she found out about those other documents after the event," Cox's lawyer, David Warrington, told congressional committee investigators in May. "She didn't prepare the documents that are reported as electors certificates. She didn't prepare that. She didn't have any prior knowledge of that."
Cox detailed how her team prepared a separate document for the electors to sign, stating they had merely participated in a ceremony and "would cast their votes" for the Republican presidential candidate if given the chance.
The Detroit News obtained an unsigned copy of the document Cox referenced in January, which appeared to further undercut the certificate submitted to the National Archives, claiming Trump had won Michigan.
Cox told U.S. House investigators the intent behind the document she pushed for was to state the Republican Trump electors were willing to serve and vote for Trump if "something were to happen in the courts" in the future to overturn the result.
In January, Nessel said the U.S. House committee had produced "an overwhelming amount of evidence" for the Michigan case.
"I thought there was already a substantial amount of evidence in that case," Nessel told reporters. "But now, there is just clear evidence to support charges against those … 16 false electors, at least in our state."
Yet, the Michigan Republican Party has accused Nessel of "using taxpayer dollars to perpetually persecute her political enemies."
Asked Friday about other Republicans being interviewed by Nessel's office, Maddock, who has often clashed with Cox in the past, responded via text message, "Laura Cox lol."
———
