LANSING, Mich. (ChurchMilitant.com) – A Michigan man is seeking the dismissal of the state attorney general’s trumped-up charges of forgery and conspiracy surrounding the 2020 presidential election.
Attorney General Dana Nessel
Clifford Frost Jr.’s legal team filed a motion for summary disposition on Thursday, requesting that the eight charges brought against him by Michigan’s pro-Marxist attorney general, Dana Nessel, be dropped.
“The Michigan Criminal Prosecution represents an attempt to criminalize what was at most a futile political protest,” the motion stated. “[T]he Republican Elector Certificate at most had the effect of furthering a political protest and could never have resulted in Michigan’s 16 electoral votes being cast for the Republican Party candidates.”
On July 18, Attorney General Dana Nessel charged Frost and the 15 other so-called false electors in connection with the 16 Republican voters’ submission of a so-called false electoral vote certificate — one that would have given Michigan’s 16 votes to President Donald Trump.
The recorded results have Joe Biden beating Trump 2,804,040 votes to 2,649,852 in the 2020 election. Each defendant faces up to 85 years in prison after being charged with
One count of conspiracy to commit forgery, a 14-year felony
Two counts of forgery, a 14-year felony
One count of conspiracy to commit uttering and publishing, a 14-year felony
One count of uttering and publishing, a 14-year felony
One count of conspiracy to commit election law forgery, a 5-year felony, and
Two counts of election law forgery, a 5-year felony.
“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,” Nessel claimed in a press conference.
“My department has prosecuted numerous cases of election law violations throughout my tenure,” Michigan’s top law enforcer continued, “and it would be malfeasance of the greatest magnitude if my department failed to act here in the face of overwhelming evidence of an organized effort to circumvent the lawfully cast ballots of millions of Michigan voters in a presidential election.”
The Arguments
According to the attorney general’s press release:
These defendants are alleged to have met covertly in the basement of the Michigan Republican Party headquarters on December 14th, 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 defense argued in its motion that the charges rested entirely on the prosecution’s ability to prove the “false electors” committed the crime of forgery. “The Michigan Supreme Court has defined forgery as the making of a document with intent to deceive in a manner which exposes another to loss,” wrote the defense attorneys.
The defense contended that the “writing itself” is “not a lie.”
“[T]he Electors’ Certificate can only be characterized as being exactly what it purports to be: it accurately identifies the persons purporting to be the ‘duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Michigan,'” the defense explained.
“At most, the AG alleges that the Elector’s Certificate contains false statements of fact. But the Michigan Courts have made clear that an authentic document that contains false statements as a matter of law is not a ‘forgery,'” the attorneys continued.
Steelmanning the prosecution’s case, the defense noted:
The Elector’s Certificate could be deemed to ‘purport to be what it is not’ only if Defendant and the other Republican Electors tried to ‘dummy up’ a certificate that appeared to comply with the state and federal requirements in order to evade the state and federal electoral requirements and fool Congress into giving Michigan’s 16 electoral votes to the Republicans. But that would require [the] Defendant and the other Republican Electors to, at the very least, present a Electors’ Certificate that didn’t include their own signatures but instead contained the forged signatures of the Democratic Electors (presumably falsely voting for Donald Trump and Mike Pence) coupled with a forged copy of the necessary Governor’s Certification.
The attorney general, the defense reminded, specifically alleges that the signatures of the Republican Electors on the Electors’ Certificate are genuine.
“There is another important reason the Elector Certificate, as a matter of law, cannot serve as a basis for criminal liability for forgery,” the defense pressed on. “[T]he Elector Certificate was a legal nullity and therefore never could have achieved the Republican Electors’ purported goal of having Congress award Michigan’s 16 electoral votes to Donald Trump and Mike Pence.”
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Frost’s attorneys demonstrated that, under current regulations, Congress could not possibly have accepted the 16 Republican votes as valid, even if it had received both the Republican and Democrat opposing certificates.
The Michigan case was the topic of a recent Vortex episode, after Church Militant CEO Michael Voris and others spoke at a telethon in support of the 16 charged individuals.
Fox News reported, “False Electoral College certificates were also submitted declaring Trump the winner of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.”
Critics are denouncing the move by the lesbian, abortion-loving, drag-promoting attorney general as another Marxist attack by the Left on dissenting voices.
Weaponizing the Law
Michigan is currently a Democratic trifecta, with the Left possessing both state chambers and the governorship. So Democrats in the state have a unique opportunity to craft law that can be used against political opponents.
For example, a so-called hate speech bill, which critics say would be a tool for Democrats to prosecute political rivals based on purely subjective interpretation of what has always been constitutionally protected speech, has passed through the Michigan House of Representatives and is making its way through the state legislature. If passed, the bill would carry a violation penalty per occurrence of up to five years in prison, a $10,000 fine or both.