- Judge dismissed felony charges against 15 Michigan Republicans charged in a so-called false electors scheme
- Case stemmed from allegations the group knowingly signed a document falsely claiming Donald Trump won Michigan’s 2020 election
- Judge Kristen Simmons said Tuesday the state failed to prove the group intended to commit fraud
LANSING — A Michigan judge on Tuesday dismissed felony charges against 15 Republicans accused in a so-called fake electors scheme, ruling prosecutors failed to prove they knowingly committed a crime by signing a document incorrectly claiming President Donald Trump won the state’s 2020 election.
“This is a fraud case, and (you) have to prove intent,” Lansing 54-A District Court Judge Kristen Simmons told a packed courtroom, “and I don’t believe that there’s evidence sufficient to prove intent.”
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel had charged the defendants — including former Republican National Committee member Kathy Berden and former Michigan GOP Chair Meshawn Maddock — with eight felony counts, including forgery and uttering and publishing false documents.
Republicans celebrated dismissal of the case, which had been tied up in court for more than two years and marked Michigan’s most aggressive attempt to seek accountability for failed efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss.
Maddock, who had faced multiple felony charges, responded to Tuesday’s ruling by calling Nessel “a legal thug” and insisting that all defendants “knew from day one that we had done nothing illegal or wrong.”
“Yes, we volunteered to be an alternate elector in support of Donald J. Trump,” she said in a statement. “That is not a crime, as much as Nessel wanted it to be one. … Their goal is not a conviction, it is pure legal harassment. Nessel’s defeat today was epic.”
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Nessel, a second-term Democrat who had initially urged federal prosecution before bringing state charges in 2023, said her office “has the right” to appeal Simmons’ decision not to send defendants to trial and is “evaluating” that possibility.
“This was, in my belief, a coordinated attempt to overturn the will of the American people and reinstate Donald Trump as president,” Nessel told reporters after the ruling.
“If they can get away with this, well, what can’t they get away with next?”
A ‘critical’ witness at the heart of the case
In announcing her decision to dismiss the case before trial, Simmons highlighted testimony from James Renner, who was initially charged alongside the other 15 Republicans but later agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
Renner was a “critical” witness who “testified that at the meeting, there was no intent to defraud (or forge) and that all of the proposed Republican electors that he encountered were trying to do what they believed was the right thing,” said Simmons, who was appointed to the bench in 2019 by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
Defendants had claimed they gathered at Michigan Republican Party headquarters in December 2020 to present an “alternative” slate of electors in the event a recount or legal challenge overturned Biden’s win in the state.
“The people’s chief witness testified it was his belief that the Senate could receive and then decide which (elector slate) they would accept,” Simmons said, “but that his intent was only for the document to be used if Donald Trump was declared the legal winner.”
The case is not about “the intent” of Trump attorneys Shawn Flynn, Kenneth Chesebro, Rudy Giuliani or even Trump himself, Simmons continued. It’s about the intent of “the people that were actually named in this case.”
Republicans criticize prosecution
The case dismissal was met with applause and cheers from outside 54-A District courtroom Tuesday. With supporters of the defendants on hand, the room quickly reached its 33-person capacity. Onlookers spilled out into the building’s hallways. Court staff removed some media, citing fire codes.
Republicans like state Rep. Matt Maddock of Milford, whose wife had faced multiple felony charges in the false elector plot, accused Nessel of using her office to prosecute political enemies, calling it “lawfare.”
The defendants should “sue the shit out of” the attorney general, he said outside the courtroom. “All these people will get retribution for what Dana Nessel did to them.”
Nessel dismissed the threat, telling reporters she believed “any such lawsuit would be specious and be wholly lacking in viability and merit.”
Former Michigan House Speaker Tom Leonard, a Republican who lost to Nessel in 2022 and is now running for governor in 2026, called her “the most reckless attorney general in the country.”
An investigator from Nessel’s office had named Leonard, his wife and Trump as “unindicted co-conspirators” during a preliminary exam hearing without explaining why. Nessel’s office later walked back a similar claim about
“This case was without merit, politically motivated, and driven not by justice, but by an attorney general intent on scoring political points,” Leonard said in a statement. “The judge’s dismissal is a complete vindication.”
But Nessel defended her decision to file charges in the case, saying it stemmed from the actions of “people who conspired to nullify the votes” of the 2.8 million Michiganders that voted for Biden in 2020.
“I am terrified for the 2026 elections, and not because I’m worried somebody I support will lose,” Nessel added. “I’m worried that President Trump and his aiders and abettors and followers have already ensured that no future American election will ever really be fair, or free.”
A lengthy process
Charges against the 15 Republicans were initially filed in July 2023 but date back to actions from December 2020, when defendants allegedly signed a document claiming Trump had won Michigan’s presidential election despite his 154,188-vote loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
In a series of preliminary exams that began in December 2023 and concluded in October 2024, prosecutors argued there is ample evidence the defendants knowingly committed forgery by sending a slate of false electors to the National Archives and Congress.
Throughout preliminary examinations, state prosecutors detailed how the would-be electors met at the Michigan Republican Party headquarters in Lansing to sign a document lawmakers could consider as a potential alternative to the Democratic slate of electors intended for Biden.
The certificate was subsequently delivered to the National Archives and US Senate before Congress certified Biden’s win on Jan. 6, 2021, when conspiracies about Trump’s election loss culminated in riots at the US Capitol.
While preliminary exams in the case took more than two years to complete, Simmons said Tuesday it was “preposterous” to claim the court did not decide in a timely manner whether to send defendants to trial, noting how many individuals were charged in the case and the breadth of documents filed.
“This is a hearing that marks the culmination of a lengthy and hotly contested felony preliminary examination,” Simmons said.
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