Lawyer for former Kansas AG Kline’s group tried to deliver fake electors in Michigan

A lawyer for a legal project headed by former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline in 2020 attempted to deliver a fake slate of presidential electors to the Michigan legislature in a bid to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory.

More than a year later, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is calling on federal prosecutors to criminally investigate 16 Republicans who submitted false certificates claiming to be electors.

Nessel, a Democrat, last week said her office had evaluated charges for nearly a year but had instead referred the matter to the U.S. attorney in western Michigan.

The fake electors were part of a broader push in more than half a dozen states by Republicans after the 2020 election to put forward fake electors who would attempt to keep President Donald Trump in office. Republicans in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin all submitted certificates, according to documents obtained by the watchdog group American Oversight last year.

“Under state law, I think clearly you have forgery of a public record, which is a 14-year offense, and election law forgery, which is a five-year offense,” Nessel said on MSNBC. But the Justice Department, she said, is best suited to probe and potentially prosecute.

As members of the Electoral College met in Michigan on Dec. 14, 2020, Ian Northon, a lawyer for The Amistad Project tried to deliver certificates signed by Republicans to the legislature but was stopped by law enforcement. The Amistad Project describes itself as “uncovering hard evidence of election meddling” and lists Kline as its founder.

Kline, a Republican, was attorney general from 2003 until 2007 when he lost re-election. His Kansas law license has been suspended since 2013, stemming from his investigation into Kansas abortion providers after he was elected attorney general.

The New York Times reported over the weekend that on the same day Northon tried to bring fake electors to the Michigan legislature, Kline appeared on right-wing media outlets to promote the plan.

“Michigan AG Dana Nessel is politicizing her office and attempting to criminalize political dissent by using trumped-up charges of ‘forgery’ to go after Michigan’s 2020 GOP electors,” Kline tweeted last week. “The timing of this attack — more than a year after the fact — shows that it’s purely political.”

The Associated Press contributed to this story