The so-called “fake electors” case in Michigan has collapsed. On Tuesday, District Court Judge Kristen D. Simmons dismissed the criminal charges against 15 Republicans who Democrats accused of conspiring to fraudulently certify Donald Trump as the 2020 winner in the state.
Her reasoning was blunt: the state had not proven intent to commit fraud. Instead, Simmons said the defendants sincerely believed there were serious problems with Michigan’s election results and were acting within their rights. “I believe they were executing their constitutional right to seek redress,” the judge explained.
That strikes at the very foundation of Attorney General Dana Nessel’s case. For more than two years, she had touted the charges as a necessary defense of democracy, calling the defendants liars who tried to “steal millions of votes.” But Simmons’ ruling strips the prosecution of its moral high ground, reducing it to what critics have long argued it was: a partisan exercise aimed at criminalizing political opposition.
The context matters. After the 2020 election, the Trump campaign organized alternate slates of electors in contested states as a legal contingency. If courts or state legislatures invalidated Biden’s certified victories, those votes needed to be ready for Trump. Democrats themselves had used the same tactic in 1960, when Kennedy electors were lined up as an insurance policy in the razor-thin race against Nixon. To call the Trump electors “fake” was a rhetorical weapon, not a legal one.
The case against the Michigan electors, like all the “fake electors” cases, was bogus from the start. As with the JFK precedent, the goal was not to defraud but to have a substitute set of electors as a remedy if courts ruled their way. https://t.co/wWy79Mfiu8 via @BreitbartNews
— Joel Pollak (@joelpollak) September 9, 2025
Nessel, a progressive activist turned AG who once joked about wanting “a drag queen for every school,” turned the case into a crusade. She charged 16 Republicans with forgery and conspiracy—an unprecedented move that even many legal scholars questioned. One defendant flipped and agreed to cooperate, but the rest fought back. Now, the court has sided with them.
Breitbart’s Joel Pollak summed it up neatly: “The case against the Michigan electors, like all the ‘fake electors’ cases, was bogus from the start. As with the JFK precedent, the goal was not to defraud but to have a substitute set of electors as a remedy if courts ruled their way.”
Prominent MAGA activist and former Michigan GOP co-chair Meshawn Maddock was among the accused. Her lawyer blasted the AG’s effort as a “malicious prosecution” and a waste of taxpayer money.
Nessel called the ruling “disappointing” and hinted at an appeal. But her comment afterward revealed more than she may have intended: “And if they can get away with this, well, what can they get away with next?” That is less a legal argument than a political lament—a recognition that the show trial she hoped to stage won’t be happening.
