The State of Michigan has laid charges against some residents for a plan to unlawfully overturn Joe Biden's 2020 election win.
Attorney General Dana Nessel announced Tuesday afternoon that her office has charged 16 people with a "false elector" scheme designed to disregard Biden's electoral vote win in the Wolverine State and instill Donald Trump as the winner.
The suspects ranged in age from 55 to 82, and are from all regions of the state, according to a release from the Attorney General's Office.
"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," said Nessel in the release. "My department has prosecuted numerous cases of election law violations throughout my tenure, 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."
Detroit television station WJBK reported that one of the suspects, Meshawn Maddock, is a former co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party and is married to a current Michigan state representative.
Each of the suspects has been charged with conspiracy to commit forgery, conspiracy to commit uttering and publishing, uttering and publishing, and conspiracy to commit election law forgery.
Additional charges include two counts apiece of forgery and election law forgery. Each count is a felony carrying a maximum sentence ranging from five to 14 years in prison.
According to Nessel, the suspects met in secret in the basement of the state Republican Party headquarters on December 14, 2020, to sign their names to multiple documents declaring themselves the duly-appointed electors of the State of Michigan. Those papers were then sent to the United States Senate and the National Archives in Washington, DC, in an effort to award Michigan's 16 electoral votes to Donald Trump rather than rightful winner Joe Biden, who won Michigan by 154,188 votes.
The charges have yet to be proven in court.
The announcement came hours after ABC News reported that Trump had been notified about being the target of a criminal investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election in his favour.
