A judge rejected criminal charges against 15 Republicans who tried to pretend to be members of the electoral college in order to swing the 2020 presidential election in Donald Trump.
The group believed that the false claims of Trump according to which there was generalized electoral fraud and tried to settle in place of their adversaries of the Democratic Party.
According to the prosecutors, they met in secret and signed their names to documents claiming that they were chosen to represent Michigan.
On Tuesday, judge of the district court, Kristen D Simmons, rejected the counterfeit, the conspiracy and other accusations against the group and decided that they had legally exercised their constitutional rights.
The judge said that the group was not “advised or sufficiently sophisticated to fully understand the electoral process” and did not try to forge seals or official signatures.
“”[They] Sincerely believed, for any reason, that there were serious irregularities with the elections or with the vote, “said the judge.” It was their belief, and their actions were provoked by this belief. “”
The judge said that the actions of the accused, which included several eminent officials of the State Republican Party, did not justify the criminal accusations filed in 2023.
After a prolonged voting counting process in November 2020, due in part to the new rules motivated by the cocovio pandemic, Trump lost the vote but never conceded.
Instead, he urged his supporters to challenge the result. Demonstrations and marches led to a riot and the assault of the American Capitol on January 6, 2021, the day when the votes of the electoral college – the organization which finally decides on each presidential election after the popular vote was recognized – was officially counted.
In Michigan, a crucial swing state, Joe Biden won 2.8 million votes against Trump’s count of just under 2.65 million. As part of the winning-vain system in place in almost all the American states, Biden won the 16 electoral votes of Michigan on its way to a global victory of 306-232.
In a video statement after the judge’s decision, Michigan’s prosecutor Dana Nessel, a democrat, said that the decision was “disappointing” and that his office is planning to appeal.
“It was, to my belief, a coordinated attempt to reverse the will of the American people and to restore Donald Trump as president, despite the victory of Joe Biden in the elections of this office,” she said.
John Freeman, lawyer for one of the accused, told local media after the decision that the decision was “a real testimony to how the system is supposed to work”.
He said that the case was “a witch -shaped witch -motivation”.
Other criminal cases involving people who have presented themselves as voters of electoral colleges are underway in states such as Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin.
