The 16 are said to have falsified documents that legitimized them as voters several weeks after the election in November. The electors are the ones who make the formal choice of the president of the United States. Meeting in the basement of the Republican Party The 16 are all associated with the Republican Party. They are charged with eight offenses each, including document forgery. According to the indictment, the 16 met in the basement of the Republican Party headquarters in the state capital of Lansing in December 2020, where they falsified the documents that were then submitted to the Senate. FALSE DOCUMENTS: The 16 are accused of having tried to identify themselves as voters in order to prevent Joe Biden from being appointed as the new president. Photo: Jon Elswick / AP The purpose is said to have been to prevent the election winner Joe Biden from being appointed president in a meeting in the Senate in January. It was during this meeting on January 6, 2021 that Congress was stormed by Trump supporters. – Wanted to change the election The 16 tried to take the places of the real electors with the intention of giving Donald Trump the victory, according to the indictment published by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, writes NBC News. – The claims in the documents were lies. They were not legally elected and they knew it, Nessel said when the charges were announced Tuesday. Nessel says the fake electors have undermined the public’s trust in the electoral system and democracy, and tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power in connection with elections. Among the defendants are several leading Republicans. Meshawn Maddock, who is vice-chairman of the party in the state, says that the indictment is “political persecution”. – The Democrats know they cannot beat Trump in 2024, so they are trying to imprison their opponents, he writes in an email to NBC News. Another claims that she was not aware of what she was signing. Applies to several states Michigan was one of the swing states that Trump lost. Similar attempts were made to appoint “alternative” electors in seven states, writes CNN. In an audio recording obtained by CNN, one of the fake voters in Michigan is said to have boasted that the Trump campaign “was behind the whole operation”. The charges in Michigan are the first, but it is uncertain whether the same will happen in other states. In Nevada, the attorney general has declined to prosecute fraudulent voters. In Georgia, an investigation is underway and the fake voters have been notified that they may be prosecuted. The indictments against the 16 come on the same day that Donald Trump stated that he has been notified that he is being investigated by a grand jury in Washington DC in connection with the storming of Congress in January 2021 and the attempts to change the result of the 2020 election.
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