MIGOP Co-Chair Meshawn Maddock says Trump campaign directed false elector scheme

Michigan Republican Party Co-Chair Meshawn Maddock said former President Donald Trump’s campaign directed the operation to have 16 fake Electoral College delegates submit a certificate declaring Trump the winner of the state’s electoral votes in December 2020.

“We fought to seat the electors. The Trump campaign asked us to do that,” Maddock is heard saying at a public event last week organized by the right-wing group, Stand Up Michigan, per audio obtained by CNN. “I’m under a lot of scrutiny for that today.”

CNN reports that Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who led a December 2020 Michigan House hearing on election fraud conspiracies, coordinated the fake elector effort.

Will false Trump electors’ attempt to hijack the Michigan vote be punished?

Maddock, who is married to state Rep. Matt Maddock (R-Milford), was one of the 16 false GOP electors who, on Dec. 14 when Michigan’s electors met to award the state’s Electoral College votes to President Joe Biden, attempted to enter the state Capitol to convene an “alternative” slate of GOP electors but were blocked by law enforcement from entering the building.

Biden won Michigan by more than 154,000 votes.

Despite not being allowed into the Capitol, Maddock and 15 others still signed the documents falsely claiming that Trump had won the state’s electoral votes, which was then sent to the office of former Vice President Mike Pence, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, the national archivist in Washington, D.C., and the chief judge of the western district of Michigan.

Other signatories were: Hank Choate, Rose Rook, Mayra Rodriguez, Clifford Frost, John Haggard, Kent Vanderwood, Timothy King, Michele Lundgren, Marian Sheridan and Mari-Ann Henry. Two of the GOP delegates didn’t show up and were replaced. James Renner replaced Gerald Wall and Ken Thompson replaced former Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land.

The Michigan GOP did not immediately return a request for comment.

The documents were rejected by the archivist, who notified Nessel and others, and have become part of the U.S. House’s Jan. 6 commission inquiry into the insurrection of Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol last year seeking to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s Electoral College win and install Trump for another term.

Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, said this week that she “absolutely” had enough evidence to charge the false electors with state crimes, but referred the case to federal prosecutors instead as she does not have jurisdiction over six other states that Biden won where “seeming identical” false certificates were filed showing Trump as the winner. Those states are Arizona, Georgia, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which were all won by Biden.

“It’s clear to me that this was not independent rogue actors that were unknowingly doing the same thing as they had done in many other states,” Nessel said. “From a jurisdictional standpoint, we think it’s important because it allows for the federal authorities to determine if there was a conspiracy that was a multi-state conspiracy.”