In early 2021, with the excitement of a bitterly contested presidential contest still fresh, several Michigan election officials received strange phone calls.
The person on the other end was a Republican state representative who told them his campaign team was needed for an investigation, according to documents from the Michigan attorney general’s office.
They obliged. The machines were soon dismantled at hotels and Airbnb rentals in Oakland County, outside Detroit, by conservative activists looking for what they believed was evidence of fraud, the documents show. Weeks later, after the equipment was returned to freeway lots and malls, employees found it had been tampered with and, in some cases, damaged.
Revelations of possible meddling with voting machines have caused a political tsunami in Michigan, one of the nation’s most critical battleground states.
The documents detail deception by election officials and a breach of polling equipment that stand out as extraordinary even among the volumes of public reporting on brazen attempts by former President Donald J. Trump’s supporters to snoop and undermine the 2020 results.
But one of the most politically striking elements of the case is the identity of one of the people implicated in the scheme by the attorney general’s office: Matthew DePerno, who is now the presumptive Republican nominee for that same office.
Mr. DePerno, a lawyer who rose to prominence challenging the 2020 results in Antrim County and who has been backed by Mr. Trump is vying to unseat Dana Nessel, a Democrat who is Michigan’s top law enforcement official and has fought attempts to undermine the state’s law. choice
Now, the evidence provided by his office places Mr. DePerno in one of the voting teams’ “evidence” and suggest he was a key orchestrator of “a conspiracy” to gain improper access to the machines in three counties, Roscommon and Missaukee in northern Michigan. and Barry, a rural area southeast of Grand Rapids. The tampering resulted in physical damage, but the attorney general’s office said there was no evidence of “any software or firmware tampering” with the equipment.
Even before the new allegations, the potential race between Ms. Nessel and Mr. DePerno was one of the most closely followed contests for attorney general in the country.
During his campaign, Mr. DePerno has continued to falsely claim that mail-in voting is rife with fraud and that voting records were erased or destroyed after the election, and has vowed to “go after the people who corrupted the 2020 election.” He also said that he would begin the consultations of Ms. Nessel, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, all Democrats.
His candidacy has worried election experts, Democrats and even many Republicans, who fear he could use his powers to conduct investigations based on fraudulent claims or engage in other forms of election meddling.
However, since Mr. DePerno is the likely Republican nominee — he won the state party’s endorsement this year and is expected to be formally nominated later this month — any investigation of Ms. Nessel is politically charged and risks conflict of interests With that in mind, his office requested on Friday that a special prosecutor be appointed to continue the investigation and pursue possible criminal charges.
The allegations against Mr. DePerno and eight others, including Daire Rendon, a Republican state representative, and Dar Leaf, the Barry County sheriff, were detailed in a letter sent Friday by the deputy attorney general to Ms. Benson, and in a petition from the office of Ms. Nessel asking the special prosecutor. The Detroit News first reported the letter and Politico first reported the petition. Reuters first reported the alleged involvement of Mr. DePerno.
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Tyson Shepherd, the campaign manager of Mr. DePerno, said in a statement that “Matt DePerno categorically denies the allegations made” and that “the petition itself is an incoherent dream of the liberal fever of lies.” He also said the investigation was political and that “if Dana Nessel chooses to move forward with these claims, she will ultimately find herself on the defendant’s side of a malicious prosecution case.”
A spokeswoman for the attorney general said the timing was not affected by politics.
The request of the office of Ms. Nessel states, “When this investigation began, there was no conflict of interest,” adding, “However, during the course of the investigation, facts developed that DePerno was a primary instigator of the conspiracy. “.
It continues: “DePerno is now the presumptive Republican nominee for attorney general. A conflict arises when ‘the prosecutor has a personal (financial or emotional) interest in the litigation.’
The petition names several people, including Jim Penrose, a former National Security Agency official, who have investigated claims of fraud in Trump’s 2020 loss over the past two years, many of them focused on the use of digital voting machines. , such as those made by Dominion Voting Systems. Others named in the petition, such as Doug Logan, the former chief executive of the tech firm Cyber Ninjas, were involved in various efforts to discredit the election results, such as a partisan review of the ballots in Arizona.
Nor Mr. Penrose nor Mr. Logan returned calls Monday seeking comment on Ms. Nessel.
Local election secretaries have been the target of election deniers in various parts of the country. Some have been pressured by sheriffs to participate in election investigations. County Clerk Tina Peters of Colorado herself faces criminal charges related to a violation of her campaign equipment, and local officials in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Georgia have been accused of helping unauthorized people find evidence of manipulation in the 2020 elections.
Election experts worry that local officials are a potential weak spot in the nation’s voting infrastructure and that “inside jobs” could allow manipulation in future contests or inadvertently expose the voting infrastructure.
“Raise the alarms,” said Harri Hursti, an election security expert who was in Georgia during the 2020 election. “Pollution is a real threat and you don’t need a bad actor. He’s also just an underrated actor.”
Mr. DePerno was also a lawyer in an earlier attempt, shortly after the 2020 election, to access Antrim County voting machines produced by Dominion Voting Systems.
The idea that the Dominion machines were part of a vast conspiracy by Chinese software companies and other foreign actors to rig the 2020 vote count was central to some of the more outlandish election claims brought by allies of Mr. Trump like attorney Sidney Powell.
Another person identified by Ms. Nessel in the recent investigation, a lawyer named Stefanie Lambert Juntilla, helped Ms. Powell with one of Dominion’s lawsuits in Michigan and later helped fight an effort by a federal judge to punish Ms. Powell and other lawyers. for his “historic and profound abuse of the judicial process” in filing the Dominion lawsuit.
Mr. Trump was so convinced by a report from allies of Mr. DePerno about the Dominion machines in Antrim County that, in December 2020, he told his then-Attorney General, William P. Barr, would be key evidence in helping him stay in power, according to the testimony heard by the House committee investigating the Capitol riot.
In a videotaped statement played at one of the panel’s hearings, Mr. Barr called conspiracy theories about the machines “complete nonsense” and “crazy stuff,” adding at one point that Mr. Trump had “disconnected from reality” if he believed. they.
The request of Ms. Nessel of a special prosecutor followed a months-long investigation by his office into a referral sent by Ms. Benson, the secretary of state, that unidentified people had gained improper access to tabulating machines and data drives used in Richfield Borough and County Roscommon.
Ms. Nessel’s office also contacted the Michigan Bar Grievance Commission, which investigates allegations of legal misconduct in the state, and asked it to open its own investigation “based on in the information discovered during tabulator research.” This investigation could affect the position of Mr. DePerno as a lawyer in Michigan and potentially his ability to serve as attorney general.
In a statement Sunday night, Ms. Benson said she would work to inform and arm employees with the rules on polling equipment security to try to protect themselves from future violations.
“This state’s Republican, Democratic and nonpartisan election clerks do their jobs with professionalism and integrity,” said Ms. Benson. “And we will continue to make sure they are equipped with a thorough understanding of the legal protections in place to prevent bad actors from pressuring them to gain access to secure election systems.”