- President Donald Trump cited a voter fraud scheme busted in Muskegon in 2020 as a wide evidence of election corruption
- During a live prime-time speech, he asked the FBI to reopen an investigation
- The state has probed the case and determined that, while fraud existed, it was ‘low level’
President Donald Trump used a prime-time speech Thursday to repeat debunked claims about widespread voter fraud and ordered the FBI to reopen an investigation into what he called a “pay, play and cheat” scheme in Muskegon in 2020.
In a speech panned by voting experts, Trump laid out unproven allegations about voter safety, pointing to an episode in the Democratic stronghold of Muskegon that the FBI investigated and resulted in no charges.
Trump alleged that employees for a “large-scale voter registration’ firm told agents they forged signature applications and were paid with gift cards.
“The FBI agents working on the case believed that crimes were committed, yet the Biden administration department of justice slow-walked the investigation and killed it.” Trump said.
US Rep. John James, a Republican running for Michigan governor, took to social media to credit Trump with “exposing this MASSIVE fraud and HORRIBLE incompetence,” but Democrats including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer accused Trump of trying to undermine voter confidence.
“Conspiracy theories about the 2020 elections must come to an end. Tonight, President Trump also made claims about Michigan intended to suggest our voting system is somehow rigged. It isn’t, and his claim has been debunked by experts time and time again,” Whitmer said.
“We should continue to trust our hard-working election officials across the state, follow the facts, and respect the constitutional role states play in administering our elections.”
Memos released from the White House indicate the FBI probe closed last year because it did not uncover a “criminal violation or a priority threat to national security.”
The facts
Over the years, Republicans have pointed to the Muskegon episode as evidence of voter corruption, while clerks and others say it shows a system that mostly works.
It began when Muskegon Clerk Ann Meisch notified authorities that several hundred voting applications from a single firm had irregularities including wrong birthdays.
Read more: Muskegon fake voter applications probed in 2020, referred to FBI
Michigan State Police and Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office investigated and traced the applications back to a single company — GBI Strategies office in Southfield.
Nessel turned her findings over to the FBI in 2021. The state investigation determined “fraud was determined to have occurred at the lowest levels of the company,” a spokesperson for Nessel, Danny Wimmer,said in 2023.
A search warrant of GBI Strategies found computer tablets, prepaid phones, T-shirts, pay cards and rental vans the group provided to canvassers hired to try to register potential voters in multiple cities, including Muskegon, Benton Harbor, Inkster, Flint and Southfield.
Those items, though, were “all determined to be normal operational devices in (GBI’s) line of work,” which includes political field operations and voter registration drives in multiple states, Wimmer said in 2023.
State authorities closed the investigation when it was forwarded to the FBI.
What does it mean
Democrats and others have argued the system worked because an attempt at fraudulent registrations was caught and no votes were cast as a result.
During her tenure, Nessel — a Democrat — has brought charges against those accused of double-voting, a Centerline nursing home worker who forged resident signatures on absentee ballot applications for the 2020 election, a Democratic Southfield clerk who covered up a ballot counting error in 2018 and a Democratic Flint Township clerk who tampered with a ballot container after the 2020 primary.
Trump and fellow Republicans have said it shows attempts to commit and cover up widespread fraud.
A timeline released this week by the White House showed the FBI worked on the voter registration investigation as recently as 2024. A Department of Justice memo from September 2025 — nine months into Trump’s term — indicated the probe closed “because logical investigation and/or leads have been exhausted, and the investigation to date did not identify a criminal violation or a priority threat to national security.”
Numerous audits and Republican-led investigation into the 2020 election found that Joseph Biden beat Trump in the state by 154,188 votes.
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