Steve Neavling
Donald Trump supporters rallied in Detroit in November 2020, falsely claiming widespread election fraud.
Michigan prosecutors executed a search warrant to obtain hundreds of files from Google and X (formerly Twitter) as part of an ongoing investigation into the fake electors plot in the state.
The news, first broken by CNN, was confirmed to Metro Times and provides prosecutors with fresh information for their investigation.
The warrants targeted the Google and X accounts of pro-Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, who played a major role in the scheme nationwide.
The warrant sought Chesebro’s emails and direct private messages after he denied having an X account in an interview with Michigan prosecutors last year.
The records contradict his claims. State prosecutors obtained more than 160 sent messages and more than 25 received messages from X between 2014 and 2021, with most of them coming after the 2020 election.
In July 2023, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office charged the 16 fake electors for falsely claiming Donald Trump won Michigan in the 2020 election. The Trump allies met in the basement of the Michigan Republican Party’s Lansing headquarters in December 2020 after Biden won in the state in an attempt to overturn the election, Nessel’s office alleges. The fake electors signed a series of certificates that falsely claimed Trump won in Michigan, and those fraudulent documents were sent to the U.S. Sente and National Archives, according to prosecutors.
Michigan is one of seven states where the Trump campaign launched the fake elector scheme.
Prosecutors in each state are examining how much Trump’s national campaign was involved. Since Chesebro was central to the plot on a national level, the new documents could provide prosecutors with critical new information.
In connection to the scheme in Georgia, Chesebro pleaded guilty in a criminal racketeering indictment in October and agreed to help Georgia prosecutors.
Chesebro, who has not been charged in Michigan, was accused of helping create slates of fake electors in states won by Biden.
The new documents obtained by Michigan prosecutors show that Chesebro tried in vain to lure several notorious, controversial Trump allies to Washington, D.C. to witness the fake elector scheme unfold on Jan. 6, 2021, the day that rioters burst into the U.S. Capitol.
The records also show that Chesebro encouraged conservative pundits and right-wing figures to promote his strategies for subverting the Electoral College process.
“It would help to publicize that if (then-Vice President Mike) Pence claims the power to resolve disputes about the electoral votes on Jan. 6, he’d simply be doing what (Thomas) Jefferson did,” Chesebro told Gateway Pundit founder Jim Hoft in a message on December 27, 2020.
Metro Times could not immediately reach Chesebro for comment.
Steve Neavling
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