Judge Simmons presided over multiple Zoom hearings to set future court dates for some of the 16 Michigan Republican 2020 presidential electors.
All 16 were charged in July with eight counts each of forgery and election forgery by Michigan’s Democrat Attorney General Dana Nessel.
At their Aug. 10 arraignment, all 16 pleaded not guilty.
Lansing-area lawyer Kurt Krause represents 82-year-old small business owner John Haggard of Charlevoix.
Mr. Krause told The Epoch Times, “The next step will be a preliminary examination … We are confident that Mr. Haggard’s intent comported with the law.
“The Constitution protects Mr. Haggard’s First Amendment rights to express himself, and the statutes under which the attorney general charged him all mandate a specific intent to defraud that Mr. Haggard did not possess. Mr. Haggard has faith that he will be vindicated in a court of law.”
Mr. Haggard was also elected to serve as a Trump elector in 2016.
Constitutional attorney Dave Kallman, who represents elector Hank Choate, a 72-year-old farmer from the small, southern Michigan, rural community of Cement City near Jackson, described Aug. 18’s hearings as uneventful formalities.
“Today’s proceedings were really just pre-trial conferences. In our case, the judge set Nov. 2 as the date for the next important step in the process—the preliminary examination or probable cause conference.
“She also allowed Mr. Choate to drive his truck into Indiana and Ohio to pick up grain for his farm.”
Most of the other defendants were assigned Oct. 12 as the date of their next hearing.
Mr. Kallman said that at a probable cause conference, the prosecutor must convince the judge that a crime was committed, and that the defendant committed that crime.
‘No Proof at All’
“Discovery has produced numerous audio and video recordings and 103 police reports. We haven’t yet gone through them all, but the many that we have analyzed showed that Ms. Nessel has no proof at all.“Mr. Choate did not intend to defraud or injure anybody. And, thus far, nothing we have seen in discovery proves he did.
“Nessel’s prosecution of Mr. Choate is nothing but a witch hunt and abuse of power,” Mr. Kallman said.
According to Mr. Kallman, to date two of the 16 electors haven’t yet hired a lawyer, and none are represented by the same attorney.
Attorney General Explains Allegations
After federal prosecutors demonstrated little interest in the case, Ms. Nessel decided to bring the indictments herself in mid-July of 2023.“The false electors’ actions undermined the public’s faith in the integrity of our elections and, we believe, also plainly violated the laws by which we administer our elections in Michigan.
“These defendants are alleged to have met covertly in the basement of the Michigan Republican Party headquarters on Dec. 14 [2020] and signed their names to multiple certificates stating they were the ‘duly elected and qualified electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America for the State of Michigan.’
“These false documents were then transmitted to the United States Senate and National Archives in a coordinated effort to award the state’s electoral votes to the candidate of their choosing, in place of the candidates actually elected by the people of Michigan.
“The evidence will demonstrate there was no legal authority for the false electors to purport to act as ‘duly elected presidential electors’ and execute the false electoral documents.
Selection and Duties of Electors
Pursuant to Michigan law, during a presidential election year, 16 electors are chosen by the Republican Party and 16 by the Democrat Party at each party’s fall state convention—conclaves that are held well in advance of the November general election.Thus, in 2020, Michigan had slates of 16 Biden electors and 16 Trump electors, all duly elected according to the state-mandated process.
The names of the electors certified as elected by each party are then forwarded by registered mail to the secretary of state.
After the result of the popular vote of the general election has been certified by the state board of canvassers and signed off on by the governor, the 16 electors representing the candidate who has been officially declared the winner of the popular vote assemble in the Senate chamber of the State Capitol Building on a day designated by Congress.
A Contested Election Result
The problem in 2020 was that the validity of the result of the presidential election as certified by the state board of canvassers was being hotly disputed.As of Dec. 14, 2020, several investigations and some court cases challenging the legitimacy of the popular vote count were still active, and there was a possibility that the certified result could be reversed.
Upon this belief, the state Republican Party saw fit to exercise its right to put forward a contingent slate of electors in the event that Donald Trump and not Joe Biden would be found to be the true winner of Michigan.
The precedent for the place-holder slate strategy was set in the presidential election of 1960. At that time, it was the Democrats of Hawaii who put forward their own contingent slate of electors even though Republican Richard Nixon was initially declared the winner of the Aloha State’s three electoral votes over Democrat John Kennedy.
Qualifications and Duties
According to the U.S. Constitution, voters do not vote directly for a candidate for president. Rather, they vote to send a slate of presidential electors representing the candidate they prefer. These slates make up the federal Electoral College.The above-cited Michigan statute states that a refusal by an elector to vote for the candidate for president and vice president appearing on the ballot of the political party that selected the elector constitutes a resignation.
The vacancy is filled by a plurality of votes of the remaining electors.
In Michigan, an elector must have been a citizen of the United States for no less than 10 years and must have resided in a jurisdiction of the state for at least one year prior to the election.
