The chief prosecutor of the American state of Michigan said today that indictments have been filed against 16 people suspected of pretending to be electors that Donald Trump won the presidential election in that American state in 2020, the BBC reports.
According to the British media, this is the first time that someone in the USA has been indicted for participating in the so-called "conspiracy of false electors" whose goal was to portray the Republican Trump as the real winner of the presidential election in which he lost to Joseph Biden from Democratic Party, never admitting defeat.
American presidents are technically not elected by the people but by a group of electors in each of the 50 states.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, said 16 people have been indicted for falsifying paperwork claiming Trump won Michigan. According to her, the alleged actions of the accused "undermined public trust" in the integrity of the election process.
Each of the suspects was charged with eight counts, including forgery and conspiracy to commit forgery. Each of the charges carries a sentence of up to 14 years in prison.
Nessel said that a group of accused Michigan residents participated in an "orchestrated plan" with the hope that Joseph Biden's victory in that US state would be turned into Donald Trump's victory, that is, into his second presidential term.
The defendants allegedly met in the basement of the headquarters of the Michigan branch of the Republican Party to sign multiple certificates asserting that they were duly elected and qualified electors for the election of the President and Vice President of the United States.
"That was a lie. They were not properly elected electors, and each of the suspects knew it," Nessel said, adding, "They committed these acts with the faith and belief that the 2020 Michigan electoral votes would go to the candidate who they elected and not the candidate that the voters of Michigan actually elected."
The US Congressional Committee investigating the January 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol in Washington and Trump's attempts to change the election results found that the fraudulent elector scheme was an attempt to interfere with the Electoral College system, which formally determines the winner of the election. presidential elections.
The scheme consisted of an attempt to convince assemblies with a Republican majority in seven US federal states to elect Republican electors who would then claim that Trump and not Biden had won there.
Falsified certificates of fake electors from Michigan were sent to the US Senate with the aim of having their votes taken into account when counting electoral votes and not the votes of real electors, which would reverse Biden's victory not only in Michigan but also in the whole of America, Nessel said.
Biden had 154.000 more votes than Trump in Michigan.
The indictment of the fraudulent voters came just hours after Donald Trump, now again running for president of the United States, said he expected to be indicted soon in a federal investigation into his involvement in subverting the 2020 presidential election.
After he lost, Trump and his team widely claimed that the election was rigged, and Trump continues to do so without any evidence.
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