by
Sen. Shirkey and President Trunp
On a Friday afternoon, weeks after the 2020 presidential election, Michigan's Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and House Speaker Lee Chatfield met with President Donald Trump at the White House. Trump insisted the Michigan election, like many other key states, was rife with fraud and should be overturned in his favor.
But Shirkey told Trump quite simply that he "lost Michigan not because of fraud, but because (he) had underperformed with certain voter populations in the state," according to information in a 45-page indictment released Tuesday that accuses Trump of subverting democrary by trying to derail the outcome of the 2020 election.
After the meeting, the two Michigan lawmakers issued a statement:
The Senate and House Oversight Committees are actively engaged in a thorough review of Michigan’s elections process and we have faith in the committee process to provide greater transparency and accountability to our citizens.
We have not yet been made aware of any information that would change the outcome of the election in Michigan and as legislative leaders, we will follow the law and follow the normal process regarding Michigan’s electors, just as we have said throughout this election.
In the course of 2 1/2 pages, the indictment lays out the campaign by Trump and his people to overturn the election in Michigan because of fraud, particuilarly in Detroit.
Here's some of the excerpts from the indictment:
►Nov. 5, 2020 -- The Defendant claimed that there had been a suspicious dump of votes—purportedly illegitimate ballots—stating, “In Detroit, there were hours of unexplained delay in delivering many of the votes for counting. The final batch did not arrive until four in the morning and—even though the polls closed at eight o’clock. So they brought it in, and the batches came in, and nobody knew where they came from.”
►Dec. 1 -- The defendant raised his Michigan vote dump claim with the Attorney General (William Barr), who responded that what had occurred in Michigan had been the normal votecounting process and that there was no indication of fraud in Detroit.
Despite this, the next day, the defendant made a knowingly false statement that in Michigan, “[a]t 6:31 in the morning, a vote dump of 149,772 votes came in unexpectedly. We were winning by a lot. That batch was received in horror. Nobody knows anything about it... It’s corrupt. Detroit is corrupt. I have a lot of friends in Detroit. They know it. But Detroit is totally corrupt.”
►Dec. 4 -- Co-Conspirator 1 (Rudy Giuliani) sent a text message to the Michigan House Speaker reiterating his unsupported claim of election fraud and attempting to get the Michigan House Speaker to assist in reversing the ascertainment of the legitimate Biden electors, stating, “Looks like Georgia may well hold some factual hearings and change the certification under ArtII
sec 1 cl 2 of the Constitution.
As [Co-Conspirator 2] (Lawyer John Eastman) explained they don’t just have the right to do it but the obligation. .. . Help me get this done in Michigan.”
►Dec. 7 -- Despite still having established no fraud in Michigan, Co-Conspirator 1 (Giuliani) sent a text intended for the Michigan Senate Majority Leader: “So I need you to pass a joint resolution from the Michigan legislature that states that, the election is in dispute, there’s an ongoing investigation by the Legislature, and the Electors sent by Governor Whitmer are not the official Electors of the State of Michigan and do not fall within the Safe Harbor deadline of Dec 8 under Michigan law.”
►Dec. 14 —The day that electors in states across the country were required to vote and submit their votes to Congress—the Michigan House Speaker and Michigan Senate Majority Leader announced that, contrary to the Defendant’s requests, they would not decertify the legitimate election results or electors in Michigan. The Michigan Senate Majority Leader’s public statement included, “[W]e have not received evidence of fraud on a scale that would change the outcome of the election in Michigan.” The Michigan House Speaker’s public statement read, in part: We’ve diligently examined these reports of fraud to the best of our ability....fought hard for President Trump. Nobody wanted him to win
more than me. | think he’s done an incredible job.
"But I love our republic, too. I can’t fathom risking our norms, traditions and institutions to pass a resolution retroactively changing the electors for Trump, simply because some think there may have been enough widespread fraud to give him the win. That’s unprecedented for good reason. And that’s why there is not enough support in the House to cast a new slate of electors. I fear we’d lose our country forever. This truly would bring mutually assured destruction for every future election in regards to the Electoral College. And I can’t stand for that. I won’t."
►Jan. 6, 2021 -- The defendant (Trump) publicly repeated his knowingly false claim regarding an illicit dump of more than a hundred thousand ballots in Detroit.
