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Michigan Prosecutors Charge Trump Allies in Felonies Involving Voting Machines, Illegal ‘Testing’

LANSING, Michigan — A former Republican attorney general candidate and another supporter of former President Donald Trump have been criminally charged in Michigan in connection with accessing and tampering with voting machines after the 2020 election, according to court records.

Matthew DePerno, a Republican lawyer who was endorsed by Trump in an unsuccessful run for Michigan attorney general last year, was charged with undue possession of a voting machine and conspiracy, according to Oakland County court records.

Daire Rendon, a former Republican state representative, was charged with conspiracy to commit undue possession of a voting machine and false pretenses.

Both were arraigned remotely Tuesday afternoon, according to Richard Lynch, the court administrator for Oakland County’s 6th Circuit.

Those charged in Michigan are the latest facing legal consequences for alleged crimes committed after embracing Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

The charges come as the former president is investigated for election interference in Georgia. Separately, Trump said in mid-July that he is a target of a federal investigation into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

DePerno, whose name was incorrectly listed as “DeParno” in court records, was named as a “prime instigator” in the case. He could not be reached by phone immediately for comment but has previously denied wrongdoing and has accused the state attorney general of “weaponizing her office.”

Five vote tabulators were taken from three counties in Michigan to a hotel room, according to documents released last year by Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office. Investigators found that the tabulators were broken into, and that “tests” were performed on the equipment. They said that DePerno was there.

Because Nessel ran against DePerno in 2022, she secured a special prosecutor who wouldn’t have a conflict of interest in the case and could operate independently.

That special prosecutor, D.J. Hilson, has been reviewing the investigation and considering charges since September. He convened a grand jury in March to determine whether criminal indictments should be issued, according to court documents.

Charges were slow to come in the case, in part because prosecutors wanted clarification from a judge about what constitutes illegal possession of a voting machine. Some of the defendants argued that local clerks gave them permission to take the machines.

In July, a state judge ruled that it’s a felony to take a machine without a court order or permission directly from the secretary of state’s office.

That felony is punishable by up to five years in prison.
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Judge Assigned to Trump Case Known for Giving Capitol Rioters Stiff Penalties

The federal judge assigned to the election fraud case against former President Donald Trump has stood out as one of the toughest punishers of rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attack fueled by Trump’s baseless claims of a stolen election. She has also ruled against him before. 

Trump is to appear Thursday before U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, a former assistant public defender who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama. She often handed down prison sentences in January 6, 2021, riot cases that were harsher than Justice Department prosecutors recommended. 

Trump was indicted Tuesday on federal felony charges for his persistent efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the two months leading up to the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters. 

Chutkan has ruled against Trump before in a separate January 6 case. In November 2021, she refused his request to block the release of documents to the U.S. House’s January 6 committee by asserting executive privilege. 

She rejected his arguments that he could hold privilege over documents from his administration even after President Joe Biden had cleared the way for the National Archives to turn the papers over. She wrote that Trump could not claim his privilege “exists in perpetuity.” 

In a memorable line from her ruling, Chutkan wrote, “Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.” 

Chutkan has sentenced at least 38 people convicted of Capitol riot-related crimes. All 38 received prison terms, ranging from 10 days to more than five years, according to an Associated Press analysis of court records. 

She is one of two dozen judges in Washington who collectively have sentenced nearly 600 defendants for their roles in the January 6 siege. More than one-third of them avoided sentences that included incarceration. 

Other judges typically have handed down sentences that are more lenient than those requested by prosecutors. Chutkan, however, has matched or exceeded prosecutors’ recommendations in 19 of her 38 sentences. In four of those cases, prosecutors weren’t seeking any jail time at all. 

Chutkan has said prison can be a powerful deterrent against the threat of another insurrection. 

“Every day we’re hearing about reports of anti-democratic factions of people plotting violence, the potential threat of violence, in 2024,” she said in December 2021 before sentencing a Florida man who attacked police officers to more than five years behind bars. At the time, that sentence was the longest for a January 6 case. 

“It has to be made clear that trying to violently overthrow the government, trying to stop the peaceful transition of power and assaulting law enforcement officers in that effort is going to be met with absolutely certain punishment,” she said. 

Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump nominee, suggested during a hearing in 2021 that the Justice Department was being too hard on those who broke into the Capitol compared with the people arrested during racial injustice protests following George Floyd’s 2020 murder. 

Without naming her colleague, Chutkan criticized McFadden’s suggestion days later. 

“People gathered all over the country last year to protest the violent murder by the police of an unarmed man. Some of those protesters became violent,” Chutkan said during an October 2021 hearing. 

“But to compare the actions of people protesting, mostly peacefully, for civil rights, to those of a violent mob seeking to overthrow the lawfully elected government is a false equivalency and ignores a very real danger that the Jan. 6 riot posed to the foundation of our democracy.” 
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Republican Presidential Candidates Woo Voters at Iowa GOP’s Lincoln Dinner

The race to choose a Republican nominee for the 2024 U.S. presidential election is heating up in Iowa. As VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports, the Iowa GOP’s Lincoln Dinner Friday brought nearly all of the party’s candidates to one place, allowing each to woo voters ahead of the January 15 caucus.
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Trump Charged With Willfully Retaining US Military Plan to Attack Iran

Former President Donald Trump was charged Thursday with illegally retaining a classified document detailing an operational U.S. military plan of attack on Iran, and with two counts of attempting to “alter, destroy, mutilate or conceal evidence” during the investigation into the classified documents he took to his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
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Trump, Primary Rivals Mostly Ignore Case Against Him During Key Event

DES MOINES, IOWA — Donald Trump and his top rivals for the GOP presidential nomination took the stage one by one Friday night to address an influential gathering of Iowa Republicans, with none of the top-tier hopefuls mentioning that new federal charges had been filed against the former president just a day earlier.

Instead, Trump’s competitors mostly reserved their sharpest criticism for President Joe Biden and a Democratic Party they argued had lost touch with mainstream America — failing to pounce on additional counts over Trump’s retention of classified documents that might have otherwise been an opportunity to cut into his comfortable early lead in the polls.

“The time for excuses is over. We must get the job done,” said Ron DeSantis. “I will get the job done.”

The Florida governor also repeated his frequent promise to halt the “weaponization” of the Justice Department, an allusion to Trump’s legal troubles. But he offered no specific thoughts on the cases against him — even though Trump is also bracing to be charged soon in Washington over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The former president frequently avoids attending multicandidate events in person, questioning why he would share a stage with competitors who are badly trailing him in polls. Still, with Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucus less than six months away, Trump joined a dozen other Republican hopefuls in speaking to about 1,200 Republican Party members and activists at the Lincoln Day Dinner.

“If I weren’t running, I would have nobody coming after me,” Trump said in his only veiled reference to his legal issues. He also insisted the same would be true if he were trailing in the polls.

While DeSantis didn’t mention the former president by name, meanwhile, Trump didn’t return the favor. He told the crowd, “I wouldn’t take a chance on that one,” and repeatedly branded him “DeSanctus.”

Trump was even blunter before the dinner as he opened a campaign office in Urbandale, outside Des Moines.

“I understand the other candidates are falling very flat … it’s like death,” Trump said.

More than 100 people packed the small office, many wearing “Make America Great Again” hats and shirts. They had waited in 37-degree Celsius weather to enter, and the poorly ventilated office quickly became sweltering. Staff handed out water bottles, and people fanned themselves with campaign handouts. Some used paper towels to wipe away sweat.

Similar strong support for the former president was evident during the dinner, when many attendees wore “Trump Country” stickers, including 72-year-old Diane Weaver of Ankeny, Iowa.

“I think he makes America great,” said Weaver, a retiree who plans to caucus for Trump. “I think he did it once and I think he can do it again.”

West Des Moines resident Jane Schrader chose to wear her “Trump Country” sticker on her pants instead of at eye level. “I’m not quite dyed-in-the-wool. I’m a supporter, but not that kind,” said the retired physician, explaining her sticker placement.

DeSantis, who like most of Friday’s speakers vowed to visit all of Iowa’s 99 counties, is Trump’s strongest primary competitor but has been trying to reset his stalled campaign for two weeks. He’s increasingly focusing on Iowa in its efforts on trying to derail Trump, and spoke at the dinner in the midst of a two-day bus tour of the state.

The governor’s stumbles have raised questions about whether another candidate might be able to emerge from the field and catch the former president. Some evangelicals, who can be determinative in Iowa’s caucuses, have pointed to South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott’s upbeat message and pulpit-style delivery as strengths that could help him rise there.

Scott, who also spoke Friday night and didn’t mention Trump or the cases against him, took a swipe this week at DeSantis over the Florida governor’s support for new standards that require the state’s teachers to instruct middle school students that slaves developed skills that “could be applied for their personal benefit.”

The only Black Republican in the U.S. Senate, Scott said all Americans should recognize how “devastating” slavery was. “There is no silver lining” to slavery, he added.

DeSantis has also faced criticism from teachers and civil rights leaders, as well as mounting pushback from some of his party’s most prominent Black elected officials. Florida Rep. Byron Donalds said he hoped officials might “correct” parts of the curriculum addressing lessons on the developed skills of enslaved people. Texas Republican Rep. Wesley Hunt, Michigan Rep. John James and Will Hurd, a former Texas congressman now also running in the GOP presidential primary, have also criticized DeSantis.

Still, the governor continued to dig in on the issue, saying at a pre-dinner event in Oskaloosa on Friday, “D.C. Republicans all too often accept false narratives, accept lies that are perpetrated by the left.”

John Niemeyer, 52, from Kalona, Iowa, attended DeSantis’ event and was impressed. But, as a high school teacher, he’s not a fan of some of the governor’s positions on education policy.

“I don’t want to make our classrooms a political battlefield,” he said, adding that it would be a “mistake” to make the issue the forefront of his campaign.

Vice President Kamala Harris made her own Iowa stop on Friday, seeking to draw a contrast with the Republicans as she looked to lift President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign. Harris met in Des Moines with activists and discussed abortion rights, after Reynolds recently signed a ban on most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.

“I do believe that we are witnessing a national agenda that is about a full-on attack on hard won freedoms and hard won rights,” the vice president said.

Trump, meanwhile, did face criticism Friday night from some Republican opponents, but only those considered long shots. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchison declared, “As a party, we need a new direction for America and for the GOP (Republican Party),” drawing only muted reaction from the crowd.

Loud and sustained boos came, however, for Hurd, who said, “The reason Donald Trump lost the election in 2020 is he failed to grow the GOP (Republican) brand.”

The former congressman pressed on, saying: “Donald Trump is not running for president to make America great again. … Donald Trump is running to stay out of prison.”

That was the only reference to locking Trump up on the night, except for a surprising — and potentially coincidental — snippet of walk-on music played as the former president took the stage. Like all the candidates, the event’s organizers played parts of Brooks & Dunn’s Only in America as Trump approached.

But his part included the lyrics: “One could end up going to prison. One just might be president.” 
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