Michigan
Exams conclude for final 3 defendants charged in 2020 Michigan fake elector scheme • Michigan Advance
Exams wrapped up Wednesday for the final three people charged with submitting false electoral votes for former President Donald Trump in 2020.
The three defendants, Stanley Grot, Timothy King and Kent Vandwerwood, had their cases back in court this week in front of Ingham County District Judge Kristen Simmons, who will decide whether there is enough evidence against those charged in the case to send them on to trial in circuit court.
Grot, King and Vanderwood were among 16 people charged last year by the Michigan Attorney General’s Office with several felonies, accused of fraudulently submitting fake electoral votes for former President Donald Trump to the U.S. Senate and National Archives.
Each defendant faces eight counts including charges of forgery, conspiracy to commit forgery, uttering and publishing, conspiracy to commit uttering and publishing, election law forgery and conspiracy to commit election law forgery. The forgery-related charges each carry a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison, while the election law charges carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
16 Michigan Republicans charged with felonies in 2020 fake elector scheme
A 16th defendant, James Renner, had his charges dropped as part of a cooperation agreement with the Attorney General’s Office, in exchange for testifying on behalf of the prosecution.
Renner was on the stand Tuesday and Wednesday, recalling the circumstances that led to he and the 15 defendants meeting on Dec. 14, 2020, at the Michigan Republican Party headquarters in Lansing. At that meeting, prosecutors say they signed documents identifying themselves as the rightful electors of Michigan, and then attempted to cast the state’s electoral votes for former President Donald Trump.
That was despite the fact that President Joe Biden won Michigan by more than 154,000 votes, and a Democratic panel of electors were the rightful group to submit the state’s electoral votes. But conspiracies over election fraud, spearheaded by Trump, led many in the state of Michigan to question and deny the integrity of the 2020 election. Trump continues to make the false claims as he campaigns for a second term.
As he testified in December, Renner said there was never any discussion to the group that the documents were, in fact, illegal, but instead that should the election be overturned and Trump be determined to have won the 2020 presidential election, the paperwork would ensure that the appropriate partisan electors would be counted and Michigan could submit its votes for Trump.
Renner was one of two last-minute replacements for original elector candidates Terri Lynn Land, a former secretary of state, and Gerald Wall, neither of whom attended the Dec. 14, 2020, gathering.
Renner testified that after signing the document, the group later walked it over to the Capitol building to try and deliver it to the state Senate, but were denied entry as the legal Electoral College was meeting to cast their votes for Biden. A video of that encounter was played in court and confirmed by Renner as authentic. At the time of the attempted delivery, the lawful Democratic electors were gathered inside and casting their ballots as prescribed by law.
Renner also testified to the presence of Ian Northon, who he said he had first noticed joining the group as they walked to the Capitol. Northon is an attorney who was identified by former Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey (R-Clarklake) to the Jan. 6 committee as one of those pressuring him on behalf of the Trump campaign to illegally appoint fake electors.
Defense attorneys worked to portray their clients as having been misled by others leading the effort, such as Northon, but also Kenneth Chesebro, the former Trump attorney who has admitted to orchestrating a multi-state fake elector plot to present fake elector documents in favor of a Trump presidency, and who pleaded guilty in October 2023 to a felony count in Georgia as part of that plot.
He is also an unindicted co-conspirator in the Michigan case, along with Trump, and several others, including Trump lawyers Jenna Ellis and Rudy Giuliani.
Also testifying was Howard Shock, a special agent investigator with the Michigan Department of Attorney General, who conducted the investigation that led to the charges. He previously revealed that Chesebro had been cooperating with their investigation, including turning over an email that contained a copy of a false certificate that the defendants later signed.
Defense attorneys in all three sets of hearings have argued that their clients believed they were filling out the document as an alternate slate of electors, and not as the duly sworn electors required by law to cast their votes for the winner of Michigan’s popular vote, which was Biden.
At one point, Grot’s attorney, Derek Wilczynski, asked Shock if there was any law that he was aware of that said that the Republican electors were not allowed to cast their votes for President Trump and Vice President Pence even though the Democratic electors were legally empowered to do so as Biden had won the popular vote.
“So what I found was there was election law that lays out how the party that receives the popular vote, casts the (electoral) votes, but nothing in the law that I found that says the Republican Party can’t cast their votes,” said Shock.
On redirect, Assistant Attorney General LaDonna Logan had Shock confirm that the document the defendants all signed affirmed that as required by Michigan’s faithful electors provision, MCL 168.47, they were casting their votes for Trump and Pence as the duly sworn electors, which they were not.
Shock was also asked by Vanderwood’s attorney Brian Lennons whether there was a witness or a document that would confirm his client ever reviewed any documents, altered or not, by Kenneth Chesebro or anyone else from the Donald Trump campaign.
“Just the one with his signature on it,” replied Shock.
Simmons initially decided in January to split up the docket into two groups, with preliminary exams concluding in April for the first six defendants, which included Michigan GOP National Committeewoman Kathleen Berden, former Michigan GOP Co-Chair Meshawn Maddock, Amy Facchinello, John Haggard, Mari-Ann Henry and Michele Lundgren.
A second group — Rose Rook, Clifford Frost, Marian Sheridan, Kenneth Thompson, William Choate and Mayra Rodriguez — had their exams conclude in June.
Grot, King and Vandwerwood, had their cases adjourned to later dates for various reasons, and were eventually scheduled together to be held this week.
At the conclusion of Wednesday’s hearing, Wilczynski requested that the defense attorneys receive transcripts of all the hearings before they filed briefs against binding over their clients for trial.
Simmons, as she had to previous requests for transcripts, rejected the request as well as a follow-up motion by Wilczynski that another hearing be held once the transcripts were available.
“I’m not inclined to carry this matter over any further, because this matter should have been wrapped up a while ago. Remember, I separated this into two factions, not three, and so this was because three of you all failed to comply with the other court dates. And so I’m not going to set this out an additional time,” she said.
It’s not known how long Simmons will take to render her decision, although prosecution briefs are expected within the next 30 days, with defense attorneys having at least 30 days after that to respond.
YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.
Lansing — Jocelyn Benson, the front runner for the Democratic Party’s nomination for governor, said she believes her work in eight years as secretary of state will help convince voters to promote her this fall.
On Sunday, during a convention in Detroit, Democrats will pick a new secretary of state nominee. And on Thursday, Benson’s campaign for governor submitted about 30,000 petition signatures to get her name on the Aug. 4 primary ballot.
Amid those key moments in the 2026 election cycle, Benson, a former law school dean, sat down Thursday afternoon for an interview with The Detroit News about her time as secretary of state.
“I think that’s what people are looking for: A government that saves them time, saves them money and makes their life easier,” Benson contended. “I’ve done that as secretary of state, and I’ll do that as governor.”
The following interview was edited for length and clarity.
Question: You just dropped off your signatures this weekend. The Democrats are going to be gathering to nominate a new person for secretary of state. I was just looking over your campaign promises from 2017, do you feel like you hit them?
Benson: I had two goals when I came into office: wait times down and voter turnout up. And we did both, and I’m really proud of that.
When I started, we did a strategic planning session every January, and during our first strategic planning session in 2019, we filled the whiteboard on every wall in the office. And in our most recent one, the final one, we had just sort of one, just one little to-do list item left, which was really gratifying. Because we have not just increased turnout, but we’ve transformed our elections, eliminated gerrymandering, implemented the state’s first-ever citizens redistricting commission, which was no easy task, and then also implemented a number of new election procedures and options, educated voters about them and took Michigan’s elections from being ranked 31st in the country to No. 2.
We also did that while reducing those wait times (in Secretary of State offices), transforming our customer service experience. … Wait times are consistently 20 minutes or less, which was my No. 1 campaign goal.
Q: What were some of the strategies you used to get the wait times down for people?
A: No. 1, we listened to our employees, and No. 2, we collected data about what wasn’t working. You can’t fix what you can’t measure. And No. 3, we actually went around the country and looked at what states that actually had low wait times were doing. There weren’t many, but there were a few. Indiana and Illinois, had some interesting things that they did, and we took best practices that were working in other states and replicated them here.
But that first piece was key, listening to our employees. Early on in the process, we brought everyone in, all the branch office directors. I was expecting a daylong retreat where we would be discussing ideas, and I sat down with the director of branch office services. He had a whole PowerPoint presentation that went through everything we needed to do, from filling 900 vacant positions that were just vacant and not filled, to creating internally this opportunity for people to schedule the visit ahead of time.
We didn’t pay someone else to build that. That was built by our employees.
Q: When you ran in 2018, one of the big things you were talking about was election security. Do you feel like you’ve achieved that: improving election security? And what do you think about more people probably having faith in the results of elections then than they do now?
A: I am really proud of the fact that in this era of misinformation, we were able to protect our elections and ensure they remained secure.
While withstanding this unprecedented scrutiny and an unprecedented level of frivolous lawsuits, sham legislative hearings and falsehoods spread about our elections in the eye of the storm, we not only met the moment, but we built a better election system through it. That’s evidenced by the fact that we now have choices on how to vote in our state, we’ve modernized how you can register to vote and have increased the registration numbers we have.
Q: If one of these current candidates for secretary of state came to you and said, “I believe that the election is secure and everything is fine, but obviously there’s a lot of voters who don’t. How do we improve that?” What would you say to them?
A: Transparency is our friend.
Q: Just continue to open the process up as much as possible?
A: Well, the facts are on our side. The process is secure. So one of the most important things we need to do first is just continue to give people the tools that they need to get their questions answered and work with folks across the aisle, like we worked with Sen. Ed McBroom in 2021 to invite them into the process as well as answer questions that they have, while also, of course, maintaining any necessary confidence or security about the information that we’re providing.
But the through line is just transparency.
Q: What do you say to some of your opponents who will say, “Yeah, you decreased wait times. But what about the campaign finance website?” It’s not functioning, as they would hope it would.
A: Well, it’s certainly better than what we’ve had in the past. I think it’s important to remember that when I first ran for office, one of the things I heard most on the trail was actually, when are you going to get rid of MERTS (the former campaign finance disclosure system)?
Q: But that’s from people who are on the back end of it?
A: Right. Yeah. So I didn’t want to leave office without taking on that behemoth, knowing that it wasn’t going to be a smooth process, but it’s a necessary one if we were actually going to have a more transparent system, which I would argue also is something that the next secretary of state really needs to lean into more: getting money out of politics. I’ll be an ally for that as governor.
But when it comes to MITN and that process, one, what it really underscores is that I’m not afraid to take on big behemoths that others, frankly, past secretaries of state, refused to do, because it was too hard. And it does invite criticism. Whenever you try to transform a massive system that’s broken, yes, there are going to be hiccups along the way.
Q: Do you think voters are interested in that message: “I’ve improved these systems. I’m in government. I’ve succeeded in government. I can make it work.” Or are they looking for someone to just change everything?
A: People see a broken system that needs fixing, and they know I have transformed and fixed a system that every single one of our residents has interacted with. The other day, I was picking up food for my son and husband, and walking out with bags of food, and this gentleman in a pickup truck pulled up next to me in the parking lot and said, “Excuse me, are you the secretary of state?”
I was like, “I am.” And he said, “You know, I’m not political or anything. But I just was driving down this road the other day and realized when I passed the secretary of state’s office that it’s been years since I’ve had to go in there. Thank you for everything you’ve done to make that possible for me.” And I said, “Yeah, now imagine if all of government worked that well.”
Q: Do you think all three of the Democratic candidates running for secretary of state would be a good secretary of state? I know you’re not endorsing.
A: I’m committed to working with whoever comes through the convention and making sure they’re prepared to build on what we’ve done and achieve even more success.
cmauger@detroitnews.com
Before-and-after images of homes on Black Lake near Onaway provide perspectives on how the community was affected by April flooding.
Snowmelt and rain have stressed dams and caused lakes to flood in northern Michigan.
The Cheboygan County Sheriff’s Office shared on social media photos and videos that the agency captured of Cheboygan County floods on Friday, April 17 from both the ground and air.
Deputies “observed a level of destruction that simply cannot be understood from ground level,” the sheriff’s office said in the post.
Google Maps images taken from two locations on Black Lake in 2024, compared with the Friday images, show how the floodwater has changed the landscape.
On North Black River Road and Taylor Road, the water has overflowed to North Black River Road.
In the 400 block of South Black River Road, water has also flooded homes and lakeside property.
“Black Lake, Black River, Cheboygan River, Burt Lake, Mullet Lake, the Sturgeon River − and nearly every waterway in the county have overflowed beyond their banks, swallowing docks, roads, yards, and in far too many cases, homes,” the sheriff’s office post said. “What should be familiar shorelines are now unrecognizable expanses of water.”
“Our hearts are with every family affected by this flooding,” Cheboygan County Sheriff Todd Ross said in the post. “We know many of you are facing significant damage to your homes and property, and the emotional toll that comes with it. Please know you are not alone. We are working around the clock with our partners to ensure safety, provide support, and begin the process of recovery. Stay strong, stay connected, and don’t hesitate to reach out for help, we will get through this together.”
Nearby, the UAW Black Lake Conference Center shared images on social media of floodwater threatening its Old Lodge.
The conference center is located at 2000 Maxon Road in Waverly Township.
The Cheboygan County Road Commission and the Cheboygan County Office of Emergency Management closed the bridge at Five Mile Point Road on Saturday, April 18 due to significant road washout in the area of South Black River Road and Red Bridge Road.
The sheriff’s office had encouraged residents in parts of the area to evacuate earlier in the week and said Saturday it had completed evacuation efforts on the west side of the lake.
TEXAS TOWNSHIP, Mich. — A 20-year-old Kalamazoo man is dead after crashing his vehicle into a tree Friday evening in Texas Township, according to Michigan State Police (MSP).
It happened on South 3rd Street and West PQ Avenue around 6:50 p.m., troopers said.
While he was driving in a no-passing zone, the Kalamazoo man swerved off the road to avoid an oncoming vehicle and subsequently crashed into the tree, according to MSP.
The 20-year-old died at the scene. A passenger was hurt, but police said their injuries were non-life threatening.
Troopers do not believe alcohol or drugs were a factor, and the two were reportedly wearing seatbelts.
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This incident remains under investigation by MSP.
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