Schemers or patsies? Michigan Republican electors played key role in Trump election plot

One of my favorite things to do Up North is read a thriller, but the closest I came on a recent trip to Burt Lake was the affidavit Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel used to charge 16 folks with forgery and conspiracy.

Like "Moby Dick" — my only other option — it starts slow.

"I, Affiant …" doesn't quite measure up to "Call me Ishmael," but Nessel gets to her big fish a helluva lot sooner than Herman Melville.

By paragraph 28, Michigan Attorney General Special Investigator Howard Shock (the aforementioned "affiant" who signed the affidavit), describes a furtive meeting in Lansing on Dec. 14, 2020. Only GOP officials and 16 relatively minor political apparatchiks from across Michigan were allowed admittance to Michigan Republican Party headquarters. At least one spouse was left out in the cold.

"False electors were told no recording equipment was permitted inside," Shook ominously reported, adding that "cellphones went into a box away from the false electors."

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Michigan GOP officials ushered would-be electors into a basement where, we are led to believe, the diabolical deed took place: They signed a piece of paper.

But what was on that paper?

Was it the form they were supposed to sign?

What happened to that mysterious document next?

And why all the secrecy over a bunch of geezers who got dragged to Lansing to put pen to paper?

Settle in, gentle readers, because a close reading of Nessel's affidavit, interviews with participants' lawyers, a review of a deposition the former state Republican Party chairwoman gave to congressional investigators, and details sprinkled throughout the federal grand jury indictment bearing the ominous title "United States of America v. Donald J. Trump" reveal that not everything is as it appears — and that Michigan was at the heart of an alleged plot to subvert democracy and allow a usurper to retain his throne.

A whale of a story

Like most thrillers, a lot of the crucial action takes place before the event that made headlines.

In this case, state and federal prosecutors allege, Michigan is one of seven states where Trump loyalists hoped a slate of pro-Trump electors could be leveraged to keep Trump in power after he lost the popular and Electoral College vote to Joe Biden on Nov. 3, 2020. Work on this plan began well before 16 Republican electors were summoned to Lansing for that Dec. 14 meeting.

As any kid who was paying attention in high school civics class while you doodled, or, for you younger readers, sent texts, played games or watched porn on your phone, can confirm, you and I don't directly elect the president and vice president. We cast ballots that enable the party that gets the most votes to send a slate of electors to the state Capitol. After they are certified by the governor, they meet on Dec. 14 in a legislative chamber where they sign off on sending Michigan's 16 Electoral College votes to Congress. On Jan. 6 — a date that means a whole lot more to Americans than it did before 2021 — the vice president presides over a joint session of Congress and officially declares a winner in the race for president.

In early December 2020, according to the federal indictment of Trump (now commonly referred to as "Defendant" in multiple jurisdictions), the president and "co-conspirators developed a new plan: to marshall individuals who would have served as the Defendant's electors, had he won the popular vote, in seven target states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — and cause those individuals to make and send to the Vice President and Congress false certifications that they were legitimate electors."

The ensuing controversy was designed to "supplant legitimate electors with the Defendant's fake electors and certify the Defendant as president."

Meanwhile, back in Michigan, then-state Republican Party Chairwoman Laura Cox did not like what she was hearing from the Trump campaign.

"They were asking me to facilitate having the electors meet and sign some sort of document," she said during a May 2, 2022, deposition with investigators from the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol.

"I was very uncomfortable with that," Cox said, adding that she decided to instead convene a ceremonial meeting and have the 16 GOP electors "sign a document stating that if perhaps something were to happen in the courts, they were willing and able to serve as electors from Michigan for Donald Trump and Mike Pence."

But the paperwork wasn't Cox's only concern. She said a lawyer who told her he was working with the Trump campaign, "told me that the Michigan Republican electors were planning to meet in the capital (sic) and hide overnight so that they could fulfill the role of casting their vote … in the Michigan chambers.

"And I told him in no uncertain terms that that was insane and inappropriate."

Cox added that the lawyer "didn't care about my opinion. Just, we had words, and I believe I eventually hung up on him."

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Cox identified the lawyer as Bob Norton, of Hillsdale. Robert Norton II, vice president and general counsel at Hillsdale College, did not respond to the messages and email I sent him Friday.

What Cox called "a hare-brained idea" apparently got dropped. So she focused her efforts on the compromise document for GOP electors that would essentially say they were willing to serve, "if asked."

In the end, after "some talk about facilitating" a "ceremonial meeting" for GOP electors at state party headquarters on Dec. 14, Cox said party officials "ended up getting to (what) I think was a good plan."

Cox declined to comment on the electors meeting when I called her last week.

But her statements under oath to congressional investigators address both the seeming skullduggery and her lingering concerns that there still could be hijinks ahead.

"This was a very, a highly-contagioius time with COVID," Cox told investigators, adding that she wanted to limit attendance at the meeting to minimize exposing state GOP staff members to the virus. She added that some electors resisted.

"Meshawn Maddock wanted to bring her husband and a camera crew in," Cox said. "Under no circumstances were we going to allow a camera crew in to film the ceremony because it was just a ceremony, and we believed that was not appropriate. And we wanted to control the meeting and the contents of the meeting."

A congressional investigator then asked Cox: "Did you think it could get misconstrued as an effort to have Trump win the state of Michigan when he had actually been declared the loser in Michigan?"

Cox replied: "I believe that that was a potential."

She said Terri Lynn Land, a former Michigan Secretary of State who Republicans had chosen as an elector, was so leery of the situation she skipped the ceremony.

"She said, 'I'm just, I'm not going to do it. I'm not casting a vote. I'm not comfortable,' " Cox recalled.

(Nessel did not charge Land, who was represented on Dec. 14 by a replacement elector, who Nessel did charge.)

Despite her desire to keep a firm hand on the electors' meeting, Cox couldn't attend. She told investigators she got COVID-19 from Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who has been Trump's top adviser in his failed campaign to prove fraud in the 2020 elections.

Cox was right to be worried about what might happen at the meeting.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

A pawn from Paw Paw?

Rose Rook is a grandma from Paw Paw who just was trying to do her duty when she got duped.

At least that's how her attorney Michael Bullotta sees it.

He says the 81-year-old GOP elector got a call on Dec. 13, 2020, from a "Dr. Smith" who said he was from the national Republican Party telling her "tomorrow you need to go to Lansing to sign an alternate slate in the event it is determined that Trump won."

"She just thought it was a contingency signature, not an attempt to claim that Trump won," Bullotta told me, adding: "Nobody explained anything to her at that meeting."

Somewhere along the way, the essentially meaningless document Cox concocted got replaced by a document claiming Trump won Michigan. That signed certificate prompted Nessel to charge the 16 GOP electors with fraud.

"I prepared a document and set up and prepared for a ceremony, and it's totally different than what, obviously, has been reported in the press of what happened," Cox told congressional investigators more than a year before Nessel charged the electors with eight felony counts each.

Cox's attorney told investigators: "She didn't prepare the documents that are reported as electors certificates. She didn't prepare that. She didn't have any prior knowledge of that."

So who did?

Was it Marian Sheridan, one of the electors who Nessel charged?

In an email The Detroit News uncovered, on Dec. 11, 2020, GOP operative Kenneth Chesebro sent an email to Bernard Kerik and Giuliani with copies of memos "which should help people get up to speed on some of the reasons for having all electors vote in all contested States."

It continued: "Last night I emailed to Marian Sheridan (MI grassroots vice chair) a draft packet of materials to use for the voting. I will have an updated packet later this afternoon, which I'll forward both to her and you."

Sheridan attorney John Freeman, of Troy, told me Friday: "The significance, or lack thereof, of my client’s name appearing in the 'Chesebro text to Kerik and Giuliani' will be revealed at a future point during the adversarial court proceedings in the criminal case here in Michigan."

Bullotta said Rook didn't read the form she signed.

"My client never saw anything other than her signature page" he said. "She only saw a place to sign."

"She feels like she was victimized and used," Bullotta said.

Michele Lundgren, another elector Nessel charged, told WDIV-TV (Channel 4) that she only signed an index card when she arrived for the Dec. 14 meeting. She suggested that someone then put her signature on the form committing Michigan's votes for Trump.

Cox speculated that Maddock, a Trump loyalist who was one of the electors, might have played a role in hijacking the state GOP's agenda for what was supposed to be a ceremonial meeting.

"I assume that she was part of some of these cockamamie plans," Cox told investigators.

After the signing, Maddock and some of the other electors accompanied a lawyer and film crew to the state Capitol in a failed bid to deliver their signed document pledging Michigan's votes to Trump to the state Senate. She did not return my message seeking comment.

Concerns about what could happen with the document Michigan GOP electors signed were well-founded. The federal indictment of Trump says: "On the morning of January 6, an agent of (Trump) contacted a United States Senator to ask him to hand-deliver documents to the Vice President. The agent then facilitated the receipt by the Senator's staff of the fraudulent certificates signed by (Trump's) fraudulent electors in Wisconsin and Michigan."

Two months after the Dec. 14 meeting, Cox lost her bid for a second term leading the state party. Maddock was elected co-chair.

Making waves

Not long after Nessel charged her and the other electors with conspiracy and forgery, Maddock and her husband held a "Free The 16 Electors Poolside Party!" at their Milford home. There, they accused law enforcement officials of targeting conservatives, warned of a civil war, and made an apparent Holocaust reference, which is never a good idea.

A judge later barred Maddock from traveling to Missouri to attend a conference hosted by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who also believes the 2020 election was stolen, even though he hasn't come up with any proof, either.

All of the electors Nessel charged have pleaded not guilty.

Freeman accused the attorney general, who is a Democrat, of conducting "a political witch hunt."

"I believe the evidence in this case will show that the Michigan Attorney General’s targeting of Mrs. Sheridan represents a blatant attempt to weaponize and abuse prosecutorial authority in order to attack and attempt to decapitate political rivals," he said.

Bullotta who, like Freeman, is a former fed, said Rook has been victimized twice. First, by the Trump officials who encouraged her to attend the Dec. 14 meeting. Then by Nessel, whose charges carry a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.

"Our state Attorney General targeting an 81-year-old grandmother with full knowledge that she had no criminal intent of any kind is the most egregious abuse of prosecutorial power I have ever observed in my 30 years as an attorney, including my 23 years as a federal prosecutor," Bullotta said.

With 16 defendants, this is just the beginning of a long and messy legal battle. Count on defense attorneys citing the two slates of presidential electors Hawaii sent to Washington in 1960. And federal prosecutors in the Trump indictment said "some fraudulent electors were tricked into participating," but they don't specify in which states they believe this happened.

For my money, the only comments no reasonable person can challenge came from Cox, when she told investigators why she opposed schemes ranging from electors hiding out in the state Capitol to signing documents certifying a Trump victory in Michigan that never happened (Biden won by more than 154,000 votes).

"I just felt like it could lead to a bad outcome," Cox said. "It just, in my gut, didn't seem like a good idea."

M.L. Elrick is a Pulitzer Prize- and Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter and host of the ML's Soul of Detroit podcast. Contact him at mlelrick@freepress.com or follow him on Twitter at @elrick, Facebook at ML Elrick and Instagram at ml_elrick. Support investigative reporting and use this link to invite a friend to become a subscriber. 

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan GOP electors were key to Trump plot to overturn election