U.S. special counsel subpoenas Antrim County official

Dec. 22—BELLAIRE — U.S. Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith has subpoenaed at least one Antrim County official, asking for communications with a list of allies of former President Donald Trump, as part of an inquiry into the former president's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Documents provided to the Record-Eagle show Antrim County Clerk Sheryl Guy on Dec. 5 received a subpoena from Smith, who in November was named special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Guy declined to comment; Antrim County's attorney Haider Kazim could not be reached Wednesday.

The subpoena was directed to the Antrim County Election Commission and sought certain communications between June 1, 2020 and Jan. 20, 2021. Documents provided to the Record-Eagle on Tuesday show Guy responded to the subpoena Dec. 7, stating that she had no responsive documents to provide to the special counsel.

Included in the list of names the subpoena referenced were attorneys Kenneth Chesebro, John Eastman, Jenna Ellis, Rudolph Giuliani, Cleta Mitchell, Sidney Powell, L. Lin Wood, Jr., former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, and others.

Smith, since November, has overseen the Justice Department's investigation into possible election interference by Trump and a list of allies, as well as the legalities surrounding the discovery of classified documents found in a storage area at Trump's Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago.

News reports show similar subpoenas from Smith were received on the same date by officials in Wayne County, as well as Arizona's Maricopa County, Pennsylvania's Allegheny County and Wisconsin's Milwaukee and Dane counties.

Staff with Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson's office said they were unaware of the subpoena to Guy.

"I can only confirm that Wayne County and the Department of State got subpoenas at this time," Angela Benander, Secretary of State spokesperson, wrote in an email.

Antrim County's 2020 election results were frequently and falsely cited by Trump, Giuliani and others as evidence of voter fraud, after a mistake by a staff member with Guy's office temporarily assigned about 2,500 votes cast for the former president to then-challenger Joe Biden.

The mistake was corrected before the vote was certified, Guy, a Republican, repeatedly acknowledged the error, and Trump won the traditionally conservative-leaning county by a wide margin.

That did not stop the spread of conspiracy theories centered on the small, rural county, however.

Giuliani and a colleague, lobbyist Katherine Friess, were reportedly behind an effort to access election data during the Thanksgiving holiday in 2020, after local officials said they'd been visited by members of a Trump-aligned legal team.

And Trump falsely tweeted, on Dec. 15, 2020, that the county had a 68 percent error rate caused by its use of Dominion voting equipment, after a team of political operatives issued an error-laden report about the county's election results.

The report followed a court-ordered exam of election equipment, as part of a lawsuit filed against the county Nov. 23, 2020, by a Central Lake Township man, Bill Bailey.

Members of the team arrived in Antrim County by private jet, which former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne said on his personal blog he'd assisted with.

U.S. Rep. Jack Bergman, R-Mich., assisted with scheduling the visit, according to internal emails among county officials that were previously provided to the Record-Eagle in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

In April, staff with Bergman's office confirmed that the fourth-term congressman representing Michigan's First District was not on site, but had exchanged phone calls with county officials to arrange the arrival time of the Allied Security Operations Group team.

Judge Kevin Elsenheimer later dismissed the lawsuit in 13th Circuit Court, an appeal filed by Bailey's attorney, Matthew DePerno, was denied as was a request to be heard by the state Supreme Court.

DePerno, the Republican nominee for state attorney general, lost his bid for that office to incumbent, Dana Nessel, a Democrat.

Documents later provided to the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol show misinformation about Antrim County's election was part of a coordinated, nationwide strategy aimed at certifying the 2020 presidential election in favor of Trump.

A "Strategic Communications Plan" of the "Giuliani Presidential Legal Defense Team," references debunked claims about Antrim County's voting equipment as part of an effort to put pressure on Republican senators in six states — including Michigan — between Dec. 27, 2020, and Jan. 6, 2021, that Plan states.

The 22-page Communications Plan was provided to members of the Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the United States Capitol, by Kerik nearly a year ago, in response to a Nov. 5 subpoena, records show.

The Select Committee held its final public business meeting Monday, where members voted unanimously to refer the former president to the Department of Justice for possible criminal charges.

A summary of the select committee's final report was released the same day, and contains repeated references to Antrim County.

Included are tweets by the former president falsely referencing what he called voting machine corruption — despite statements by his own appointees, also included in the summary, that the mistake was caused by human error.

The final report was expected to be released Wednesday.