Noted Michigan constitutional attorney David Kallman of Lansing has been hired to keep 72-year-old Hank Choate out of jail.
The unlikely defendant is a seventh-generation dairy farmer from Cement City in rural Jackson County, who, according to Kallman, has never been in trouble with the law in his life.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, has charged Mr. Choate, a Michigan Republican Party State Committeeman, former GOP county chairman, and duly nominated Republican 2020 presidential elector, with multiple felony counts of forgery and uttering and publishing stemming from his conduct as an elector.
Mr. Choate is one of 16 co-defendants facing similar criminal charges.
They Played By the Rules
Pursuant to the U.S. Constitution, state law, and the rules of the Michigan Republican Party, the 16 were chosen as the official GOP slate of electors prior to the 2020 presidential election.Their legally mandated duty was to cast their votes in the electoral college for then-President Donald Trump, in the event that Mr. Trump won the state’s popular vote.
A similar slate of presidential electors was nominated by the Michigan Democrat Party to vote for candidate Joe Biden, if he won the state.
When Mr. Biden was declared the winner of the election in Michigan, a spate of lawsuits arose disputing the validity of the results. Some of the legal challenges were still pending in the courts on Dec. 14, 2020; the date that electors, by law, are to assemble at the State Capitol Building to cast their votes for the presidential candidate that won the state.
Fraudsters and Insurrectionists?
Ms. Nessel alleges that the GOP electors knowingly and willfully tried to hoodwink then-Vice President Mike Pence, the United States Congress, and the National Archives into accepting them as the actual presidential electors from the state of Michigan, when Congress assembled to certify the electoral college vote on Jan. 6, 2021.In her July 18 statement announcing the indictments, Ms. Nessel said, “These defendants are alleged to have met covertly in the basement of the Michigan Republican Party headquarters on December 14, and signed their names to multiple certificates stating they were the ‘duly elected and qualified electors.’
“The evidence will demonstrate there was no legal authority for the false electors to purport to act as ‘duly elected presidential electors’ and execute false electoral documents.
“There was no legitimate legal avenue or plausible use of such a document or an alternative slate of electors. There was only the desperate effort of these defendants, whom we have charged with deliberately attempting to interfere with and overturn our free and fair election process.
“That the effort failed, and democracy prevailed does not erase the crimes of those who enacted the false electors’ plot,” wrote Ms. Nessel.
‘Guilty or Not, You Will Pay a Price’
Attorney Mr. Kallman told The Epoch Times, “The prosecution’s whole scenario is ludicrous. It is just another example of Democrats waging lawfare in order to harm the reputations and drain the bank accounts of Republicans who have the courage to speak out against their misdeeds.“It is purely a partisan, political prosecution designed to silence the opposition through intimidation. It sends the message to others that guilty or not, you will pay dearly.”
In a July 28 statement to the press, Mr. Kallman called the charges “baseless.”
He said, “The frivolous prosecution was filed against political opponents without having the evidence necessary to prove the elements required to commit the alleged crimes.”
Mr. Kallman said his client, whom he describes as a “good citizen and family man,” has been charged with eight criminal counts including forgery, uttering and publishing, and election forgery.
No Intent, No Crime
Mr. Kallman told The Epoch Times, “Each of counts one through five is a specific intent crime requiring the elector to have the ‘intent to injure or defraud.’“Counts six through eight require the elector to have ‘intent to defraud.’
“AG Nessel is fully aware of that.
“The prosecution will be unable to prove intent because there was no intent. Mr. Choate had no intent to injure or defraud anyone. No evidence will support the allegations.
Weaponization of the Legal System
According to Mr. Kallman, “The Attorney General is weaponizing the legal system to attack ordinary citizens for simply following through on what they were duly and lawfully nominated by their party to do. The 16 co-defendants were simply following through on their nominated status as electors.”Mr. Kallman stated that once Mr. Biden was declared the winner of the state’s popular vote, the GOP’s slate of electors became a “backup slate and not a replacement slate.”
“There is historical precedent for alternate electors. The same thing happened in 1960 in Hawaii when the Presidential election results were disputed,” he said.
In that instance, it was the Democrats who offered an alternate slate in the event that Democrat candidate John F. Kennedy’s challenge of the results succeeded.
Initially, it was declared that the Republican candidate, Richard M. Nixon, had won the state of Hawaii—an outcome that was eventually overturned.
That decision activated the Democrat’s alternative slate and Mr. Kennedy was awarded Hawaii’s electoral votes.
There was no prosecution of Hawaii’s alternative slate.
Mr. Choate is scheduled to be arraigned on Aug. 10 in the City of Lansing District Court 54-A in Ingham County, Michigan.
