The NPR Politics Podcast - Republicans Face Charges In Michigan Over Trump Election Scheme

Episode Date: July 19, 2023

Michigan's attorney general has announced charges against 16 people for serving as so-called fake electors following the 2020 presidential election. The electors signed documents falsely attesting that Donald Trump won the state in the election. And a look inside American right-wing domestic extremism — and how groups are capitalizing on the Republican anti-LGBT rights agenda to further their ideology.This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, Michigan Public Radio Network reporter Colin Jackson, and domestic extremism correspondent Odette Yousef.This episode was produced by Lexie Schapitl. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Eva, and I'm calling from Alexandria, Virginia. Today, I'm celebrating because I just accepted my first job post-grad. I'm going to be a politics breaking news reporter in Washington, D.C. Today's podcast was recorded at 106 p.m. on Wednesday, July 19th. Things might change by the time you hear it. All right, here's the show. Hey, maybe someone will be on the politics podcast one day. When we retire. Mara, I actually think I will probably retire before you do. I don't know. You know what? I don't know. That's a good question. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And Colin Jackson of Michigan Public Radio Network joins us today. Hey, Colin. Happy to be here. So state prosecutors in your home state of Michigan have charged 16 people with felonies in relation to a fake elector scheme to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state.

As a reminder, Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in Michigan by a margin of about 154,000 votes. Colin, let's start here. Who are these 16 people? And I think we all need a refresher. If you could take us back to December of 2020 and what they tried to do. Well, except for two of the defendants, these are the 16 people that the state Republican Party approved to be Michigan's electoral college members had Trump won Michigan. They include a West Michigan city mayor, a Detroit suburb local clerk, and some Trump activists. But notably, you also see former state Republican Party co-chair and staunch Trump ally,

Mishawn Maddock. Obviously, Trump lost Michigan by over 150,000 votes. But the state alleges the 16 defendants still met inside the basement of the former state Republican Party headquarters to sign this memo, asserting themselves as the state's rightful Electoral College members. Pro-Trump crowd tried to submit that letter at the state capitol where the real electors were gathering, but they returned away. Still, the memo got submitted to Congress and the National Archives, according to the state. So Colin, what exactly are these 16 people being charged with now? So there are eight felony charges that each of the defendants face in total.

They include forgery, election law forgery, and something called uttering and publishing, which is basically another specific form of forgery. The most severe of these, though, could lead to a 14-year sentence in prison. Michigan State Attorney General Dana Nessel posted this video yesterday in which she speaks to the politics of this case and why she believed it had to be brought. Undoubtedly, there will be those who claim these charges are political in nature. But where there is overwhelming evidence of guilt in respect to multiple crimes, the most political act I could engage in as a prosecutor would be to take no action at all.

Talyn, what else is the state saying about this case? Well, for a long time, people here in general in government, you've seen a push for those who helped advance this false narrative about a stolen election to face legal consequences. Beyond these defendants, that includes lawyers who waged several lawsuits after the election. You may remember the term Kraken when it comes to that kind of scattershot strategy when it came to those lawsuits. As far as this case goes, though, Attorney General Nessel says the case is kind of open and shut and clear. Their names appear on this memo that was submitted. They're saying that parts of this memo were clearly false. For example, an assertion that they met in the Capitol when they signed this. They were not

allowed in the Capitol that day. The claim that they were the duly elected and qualified electors for the state of Michigan, which they were not simply because their candidate lost. Mara, it seems increasingly clear, if it people who rioted at the Capitol on January 6th have been indicted, many of them found guilty. Now you have these fake electors facing charges. Trump himself said on his social media site that he expects to be indicted in a federal case that he tried to undermine the 2020 election. And Georgia is also looking at a similar fake elector scheme like the one you just heard about in Michigan, another attempt to subvert what the independent judiciary found to be a free and fair election. So Trump is facing a lot of legal problems, not all of them directly related to January 6th. He's under indictment in Manhattan on charges that he falsified business records to cover up hush money payments to a porn

star. He already was found civilly liable for defamation and sexual abuse. He faces a federal charge that he mishandled top secret documents. So we're getting to a critical mass here. And I guess the big political question is, these individual indictments have not put a dent in his support among Republicans. Will the cumulative effect of them make a difference? One of the striking things, and we've talked with Domenico about this just this week, how it hasn't affected his perception among voters, certainly the Republican-based electorate. But it is still a point of fascination for me that no one running against him has been able to make any political hay against him as their as his own rivals for the nomination. It's

not working in any direction against him. That's the most incredible thing. I mean, with the exception of Chris Christie, who has tried, but he his iron grip on the Republican base is intact. Now, he I don't think this is helping him with independence, but when you see hypothetical poll matchups between him and President Biden, he's still pretty strong candidate. So Colin, where does this case go from here? Is it expected to take a long time or what are the next steps in the process you're watching? Well, right now, no arraignment date has been set. I'm told from the Attorney General's office that a summons is going to be sent out for when the defendants are supposed to appear here in Ingham County in court for that

arraignment. The investigation is also ongoing, so you could see more people be charged in connection with this fake elector plot. All right, Colin Jackson of Michigan Public Radio Network, thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for having me. All right, we'll take a quick break and when we get back, we'll take a look at far right extremism in the U.S. And we're back with NPR correspondent Odette Youssef. Hey, Odette. Hey there. So you have some new reporting on white nationalist groups that are gathering under a banner of, quote, active clubs. Can you talk about what this is and what these groups are doing? Yeah, these are neo-Nazis who are organizing into decentralized cells all over the country with a focus particularly on the mixed martial arts scene. So they are doing fitness training together, the point of which is to prepare for physical hand-to-hand combat with their, you know, perceived ideological or

political enemies. And it's an idea that's been around in Europe for a while, but it really has only manifested here in the United States in recent years. And, you know, the reason that I'm drawing attention to it now is that in the last six to 12 months, we have seen these groups really venture offline into the real world, particularly in recent months at public events that are centered around LGBTQ gatherings. This sounds a lot to me like the types of people who were drawn to Charlottesville, Virginia, to the Unite the Right rally several years ago. Is it sort of a similar type or group of people? Yeah, you know, in fact, the group that arguably started the active scene, active club scene in the United States, which is a Southern California crew called the Rise Above Movement,

was actually documented at Charlottesville in 2017. And now, you know, there's a federal court case in California against some members of that group alleging their participation in the violence that occurred in Charlottesville. You know, it's interesting because you'd think that after the fallout of Charlottesville, including the killing of Heather Heyer, who was protesting against the white nationalists that were gathering in that city, you'd think that those kind of groups would have gone underground. But now what we're seeing is active clubs are spreading and they're attracting more members than they even had back then. And I think that's really troubling because it indicates that that

violence is appealing to a larger swath of America than it had before. And that falls in line with polling that shows an increasingly radicalized political right in this country. Are these groups mostly white? Are they white supremacist groups? Yes, the active clubs, they extend their membership only to white people. They are primarily 20 something year old young men that one researcher I spoke with described as disenfranchised young men. So maybe guys who kind of don't hold much social standing with their peers. Odette, I'm curious about this point, because white nationalist politics have existed throughout American politics. But in this current iteration, it seems to be bigger than just about race and racism. As you mentioned, there's been a specific targeting of LGBTQ events and people.

There also seems to be sort of a more nebulous activism against ideology, against things like Antifa or liberalism that also seems to be animating these groups. These groups seem to have a broader focus than historically groups like the KKK or others that were largely focused on sort of race-based bigotry. And I think that's a really important thing to understand because even when you look at the far right today, you'll actually find that there is some diversity with people that embrace hard right policies today. And so how do we make sense of that? I think the way you just characterize it is correct. You know, we are seeing many of these groups, in fact, the rise above movement when it began in 2017, was targeting events in California that were gatherings of what they characterized as Antifa. So really going against what they were calling sort of the liberal woke left.

You know, what it really is, is mobilizations against liberal democracy or multiracial democracy. But it's not only about race. It's about politics as well. Mara, I mean, to be frank, this is an element of Donald Trump's Republican Party. has very publicly and notably at times either not condemned or seemed to have given winkish support towards groups that have sort of fueled some of this intolerance. His response to the events in Charlottesville were a sort of famous moment in his presidency. This is a movement that I think feels like it has some momentum in America right now. Yeah, it has support from very high places. Good people on both sides is what he said about Charlottesville. Stand back and stand by, is what he said about the Proud Boys. And we know statistically that if you look at violent extremist incidents, there are many, many more right-wing ones than left-wing ones. Odette, you had an interesting point in your

reporting in which you said that when anti-LGBTQ sentiment is heightened, as I think it is in the country right now, it can be an opportunity for extremism to spread in all forms. And I was struck by that because even just yesterday, I was watching a committee hearing on Capitol Hill go completely sideways between Republicans and Democrats fighting over LGBTQ-related amendments. You know, there's been activity across the states of affecting transgender Americans. The debate over LGBTQ rights is really at the center of American politics right now. And it seems to me that maybe there's a bigger connection between these two things than I had previously thought. Yeah, that's absolutely right. You know, what happens in the extremist playbook is that when they can find, when they can exploit an opportunity to show up in alliance with other people who may not be as extreme as they are, but hold a similar position on one single issue, they will show up because that is an opening for

them. We saw that in the last, you know, three years with the Proud Boys again, how they started showing up at local school board meetings and city council meetings against COVID mandates and vaccine mandates. You know, that was something that they found common cause with moms, just regular moms. And they were able to form in-person alliances there and sort of normalize what were at that time more extreme ideas. Odette, as always, thank you for coming on the podcast with your reporting. Thanks for having me. That is it for us today. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Odette Youssef. I cover domestic extremism. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent.

And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.