A pro-Trump attorney from Michigan has been charged with conspiring to seize voting machines after the 2020 election.
Stefanie Lambert Junttila faces four charges on the state level. She’s the third person charged in the probe into supporters of former President Donald Trump attempting to breach machines all around the state as they tried to prove that Mr Trump had won Michigan’s presidential election.
President Joe Biden won the state by more than 150,000 votes.
A candidate for state attorney general supported by Mr Trump and a former GOP state legislator are also facing charges linked to the scheme, according to CNN.
DJ Hilson, the special prosecutor in charge of the case, said on Thursday that people previously identified in the probe, including “computer experts” who asked to analyse the machines, wouldn’t face charges as they had been “deceived” by the defendants and made to think that what they were doing was in accordance with the law.
Mr Hilson told CNN that those individuals include the CEO of the Cyber Ninjas computer firm, Doug Logan, and the analyst Jeffrey Lenberg. They were also involved in breaching the voting system in Coffee County, Georgia.
Ms Lambert is one of a number of Trump supporters all over the US who attempted to access voting machines as they tried to find fraud in several battleground states, including Michigan and Georgia.
They started their search after an unsuccessful attempt to convince Mr Trump to order the military to seize voting machines.
Mr Trump and a number of his allies in Michigan spread baseless conspiracy theories claiming that major fraud had occurred in Detriot and that voting machines had been rigged in rural counties in the state.
Ms Lambert was also connected to the lawsuits trying to overturn the 2020 election, which included one failed legal filing that claimed that “massive” amounts of voter fraud had occurred. She’s closely connected to former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, who became well-known for her bizarre and outlandish theories.
Ms Powell is reportedly one of the six co-conspirators named in the most recent indictment of Mr Trump, his third this year, in connection to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Like Mr Trump, Ms Lambert was arraigned on Thursday afternoon. She faces charges linked to the unlawful possession of voting machines and conspiracy to access voting machines, court documents state.
Ms Lambert’s lawyer Michael Smith told CNN that Mr Hilson had been ignoring “applicable law” and added that he was pursuing a “malicious prosecution”.
“My client was a zealous advocate for her clients, and she did not violate the law,” he said.
The other two individuals in the case, state attorney general candidate Matthew DePerno and ex-state representative Daire Rendon were arraigned on Tuesday on a number of charges connected to the unlawful possession of voting machines and conspiracy to access voting machines. They both pled not guilty.
The probe was initially headed by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat who has harshly criticised the Republican efforts to overturn the results in the state. Ms Nessel handed over the inquiry to the special prosecutor in 2022 because of the possibility of a conflict of interest in connection to one of the targets.
