Attorney General Dana Nessel announced charges against 16 Michigan residents for their roles in the alleged 2020 election scheme. Two of those people are from West Michigan.
Three years later, and now 16 people are charged for falsifying elector documents in the 2020 election— including Wyoming Mayor Kent Vanderwood and Rose Rook from Paw Paw.
The Attorney General says, they met in the basement of a Republican party headquarters on December 14, and signed their names on multiple certificates stating they were the ‘duly elected and qualified electors for the president and vice president of the united states of America, for the state of Michigan’.
Those false documents were then used towards the states electoral votes, instead of the candidates actually elected by the people of Michigan.
Wyoming Mayor Kent Vanderwood and 81-year-old Rose Rook from Paw Paw are both listed as alleged "false electors" in the scheme. FOX 17 reached out to them about the charges, but didn’t get a response.
The city of Wyoming did provide a comment on the mayor's involvement:
"We are aware of the charges against Kent Vanderwood. These actions did not take place in his capacity as a city official. With any charges, there is a legal process that needs to be followed."
All 16 defendants face the same charges, including conspiracy to commit forgery, forgery and election law forgery, among others.
“Since World War II, we've never had an election like this where there's been a consistent and almost comprehensive attack on our electoral system at the state level, and on the U.S. Capitol itself,” said Michael McDaniel.
McDaniel, a professor of Constitutional Law at Western Michigan University’s Cooley Law School, says the announced charges came as a surprise, but this was a necessary move by the Attorney General to maintain our state's electoral process.
Blake Mazurek was an elector in the 3rd Congressional District in Kent County for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, in 2020.
“I feel like what we're witnessing here is we're moving towards accountability, and, as you know, myself and two other electors have filed a civil suit against these very same 16 electors with very similar charges,” said Mazurek.
In a statement, House Republican leader Matt Hill says in part:
“The charges brought by attorney general Nessel are serious. She bears the burden of proving them in a court of law and demonstrating that they are not politically motivated.”
The investigation is still ongoing. Each defendant charged will have individual arraignments and could face a maximum of 85 years in prison.
