Radical Michigan Attorney General Files Charges Against 16 Trump Supporters Over 2020 GOP 'Alternate Electoral Slate'

Dana Nessel, the radical leftist Michigan Attorney General under Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI), announced on Tuesday that she is seeking charges against 16 Electoral College delegates who signed an alternate electoral slate for the 2020 presidential election to be used in the event that the results of the election in Michigan were reversed in favor of 45th President Donald Trump.

Nessel and many Democrats have pushed the objectively and historically false narrative that the filing of alternate slates, a political tactic employed with multiple historical precedents, is criminal and fraudulent, according to NBC News.

This assertion is easily refuted with several examples such as the 1876 election and laid out in the opinion of then-Trump attorney John Eastman who postulated in his January 6 scenario that due to the controversy of the 2020 election, alternate slates should be submitted as they were in 1876, as well as with then-Vice President Richard Nixon's rejection of Hawaii's electoral slate in 1960.

Nixon's decision was even cited by Democrat Congresswoman Patsy Mink during the hotly contested 2000 presidential election. 

"When Congress met to count the electoral votes on January 6, 1961, it had before it three certificates from Hawaii. The first was the certificate of the Republican electors dated December 19 accompanied by the November 28 certificate of the Acting Governor of Hawaii that the electors had been appointed as a result of the November election. The second was the certificate of the Democratic electors dated December 19, 1960 casting their votes for John Kennedy. The third certificate was from the Republican Governor of Hawaii dated January 4, 1961 certifying that the Democratic electors had been elected ``agreeably to the provision of the laws of the said State, and in conformity with the Constitution and the laws of the United States'' as ``ascertained by judgment of the Circuit Court.'' The Governor annexed a copy of the court's decision to the certificate of election. Vice President Nixon, sitting as the presiding officer of the joint convention of the two Houses, suggested that the electors named in the certificate of the Governor dated January 4, 1961 be considered the lawful electors from Hawaii. There was no objection to the Vice President's suggestion, and the three electoral votes from Hawaii were cast for John Kennedy."

The Nixon case clearly set the historical precedent of a state drafting an alternate slate of electors in situations where a result is in a state of legal controversy as it was in seven different states on January 6th, 2020 as explained by The New York Times, citing a pro-Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro

"Despite the unfolding recount, Mr. Nixon claimed he had won the state, and the governor formally certified a slate of electors declaring him the victor. At the same time, Mr. Kennedy’s campaign, holding out hope that he would eventually prevail, drafted its own slate of electors, claiming that he had in fact won the race.

In his memo, Mr. Chesebro suggested that this unusual situation set a precedent not only for drafting and submitting two competing slates of electors to the Electoral College, but also for pushing back the latest possible time for settling the election results to Jan. 6 — the date set by federal law for a joint session of Congress to certify the final count of electors."

As such, the sixteen delegates from Michigan, most of whom are in their 60s and 70s, met at the state GOP headquarters and did indeed sign 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," as Nessel claimed. “That was a lie," the AG argues. "They weren’t the duly elected and qualified electors and each of the defendants knew it,” outright ignoring the fact that the Michigan results were in a state of active legal dispute.

She further argued that the documents were sent to the U.S. Senate and the National Archives "with the intent that Vice President Pence would overturn the results of the election, using the false electoral slate," using the misnomer "false electoral slate" to again describe a normal, well-precedented electoral function of sending an alternate slate when a state's results are in dispute and presenting this as a crime. 

She is reportedly charging the sixteen delegates with eight felony counts each including forgery.

Nessel's announcement is the latest in a spate of expected prosecutions of the alternate electors from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Nevada, according to NBC News, has declined to prosecute the electors and Georgia is still investigating but informed the electors they could face charges. 

This case and any others that follow against the alternate electors will almost certainly go all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States to settle the constitutional question. Meanwhile, the litigation of cases against almost eighty prominent State GOP officials will no doubt disrupt their efforts to conduct the 2024 Election.

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