Timeline: key Michigan events after 2020 election cited in criminal cases

Michigan was ground zero for the campaign after the campaign.

From the day of the 2020 election, Nov. 3, until the attack Jan. 6, 2021 on the U.S. Capitol, Michigan played a central role in the push to undermine the results of the election and cast the election in favor of then-President Donald Trump.

Here is a timeline of events in Michigan. Events that were directly cited by court filings, or mark turning points in those investigations, have been color coded.

⚫ A Federal grand jury indictment against Trump, charging him with election interference for his efforts to change the result of the election.

🟢 The racketeering case in Fulton County, Georgia, where a grand jury approved indictments against Trump and 18 close associates.

🟡 State forgery charges faced by sixteen Michigan Republicans.

🟣 A state case alleging voting machine tampering against three Trump allies in Michigan.

Nov. 4, 2020: A series of human errors in Northern Michigan’s Antrim County causes, in the early morning hours after Election Day, the county to report then-candidate Joe Biden with a shocking lead over then-President Donald Trump. The issues were quickly rectified, but not before election skeptics seize on the issues as evidence of widespread election fraud.

Nov. 4, 2020: The Associated Press reports Biden is projected to win Michigan.

⚫Nov. 5, 2020: Trump claims, falsely, “nobody knew” where thousands of ballots came from when they arrived to Detroit’s vote counting center after polls closed. The claim is later discredited in court, by state officials, and a litany of news outlets.

⚫🟢Nov. 20, 2020: Trump meets the Republican leaders of Michigan’s legislature in the Oval Office. Trump reportedly asked then-House Speaker Lee Chatfield and Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey to “have some backbone and do the right thing,” taken to mean decide Michigan’s election in his favor. Chatfield and Shirkey afterward release a public statement maintaining the result in Michigan was legitimate and committing to following the law.

Nov. 24, 2020: In a tension-filled meeting, the Michigan Board of State Canvassers certifies Biden as the winner of the presidential election in Michigan. The vote is 3-0, with two Democrats and one Republican, Aaron Van Langevelde, voting in favor of the certification. Republican Norm Shinkle abstains as Republicans wage a campaign to delay the vote.

Nov. 25, 2020: Attorney Sidney Powell files a lawsuit alleging there was widespread fraud throughout the state of Michigan and includes a slew of signed affidavits claiming they witnessed fraudulent activity. No substantive evidence of illicit activity is offered.

⚫Dec. 1, 2020: Trump again brought up fraud claims at the TCF Center, now Huntington Center, in Detroit with Attorney General Bill Barr, who reportedly told him there was no indication of fraud in the city.

🟢Dec. 2, 2020: Trump lawyers Rudy Giulani and Jenna Ellis’ testify to Michigan’s House Oversight Committee, offering a parade of witnesses making baseless claims about the election and urging legislators to “take back their power.” Republican legislators aren’t convinced.

⚫Dec. 2, 2020: Trump claims on Twitter that in Detroit “we were winning by a lot” until “a vote dump of 149,772 votes came in unexpectedly,” asserting “Detroit is totally corrupt.”

🟢Dec. 3, 2020: Giulani tells a Georgia Senate panel, without evidence, Dominion voting machines in Michigan took votes from Trump and assigned them to Biden.

⚫Dec. 4, 2020: Giuliani, who has been identified as “co-conspirator 1″ in the election interference indictment, texts Chatfield asking him to help him change the certification of electors for Trump.

Dec. 4, 2020: Antrim County resident William Bailey and his then little-known attorney, Matt DePerno, successfully secure a county judge’s permission to take “forensic images” of voting machines in one township – not to root out fraud in the presidential election, but because a tabulator allegedly failed to consider three ballots to count a township marijuana ordinance proposal that failed in a 262-262 tie. The firm making that allegation, Allied Security Operations Group, had been hired by Trump’s legal team and the campaign trumpets the ruling as evidence of election fraud.

🟢Dec. 6, 2020: Powell hires a forensic data firm to collect and analyze data in Michigan and other states. Prosecutors said the company eventually illegally analyzed voting machines used in Coffee County, Georgia. Powell was a key proponent of false election conspiracies who promising smoking-gun evidence that never arrived.

Dec. 7, 2020: Federal Judge Linda Parker roundly denied Powell’s lawsuit’s request to block the certification of the election in Michigan. ”Plaintiffs ask this court to ignore the orderly statutory scheme established to challenge elections and to ignore the will of millions of voters. This, the court cannot, and will not, do,” she wrote in the ruling. “The people have spoken.”

⚫Dec. 7, 2020: Giuliani reportedly “sent a text to intended for the Senate majority leader,” telling Shirkey to pass a joint resolution declaring “the election is in dispute” and discrediting electors who would later certify the election in favor of then-candidate Joe Biden.

🟢Dec. 10, 2020: Giuliani falsely told a Georgia House committee 700,000 more votes were cast than ballots available in Michigan because some votes had been counted four times.

Dec. 13, 2020: ASOG releases its now widely discredited “Antrim Michigan Forensics Report,” a 23-page document that would become a key cudgel for Trump allies pushing unsubstantiated theories of widespread fraud. It quickly made its way to the White House, where Trump was convinced it was his ticket to a second term. Key officials, including Barr, attorneys in the White House and cybersecurity officials don’t find the report credible.

⚫Dec. 16, 2020: The Antrim County ASOG report is used as the basis for an executive order that was drafted but never executed that would have seized voting machines throughout the U.S.

🟡⚫Dec. 14, 2020: Sixteen Michigan Republicans gather in the then-headquarters of the Michigan Republican Party to sign documents claiming to be legitimate electoral college representatives for the state of Michigan covening the state Capitol – neither of which were true.

⚫Dec. 14, 2020: Chatfield and Shirkey release another statement reiterating no evidence had emerged that would change the outcome of the election in Michigan. “I can’t fathom risking our norms, traditions and institutions to pass a resolution retroactively changing the electors for Trump, simply because some think there may have been enough widespread fraud to give him the win,” Chatfield said in a statement.

🟢Jan. 2, 2021: During the infamous phone call where Trump asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes,” Trump claimed that in Michigan, “a tremendous number of dead people” voted in the election, first asserting it was 18,000 before revising to “some unbelievably high number.”

⚫Jan. 6, 2021: Trump reiterates, on stage at a rally shortly before the attack on the U.S. Capitol, the false claim about fraudulent votes in Detroit.

🟣Jan. 2021: Now-former state Rep. Daire Rendon begins contacting local clerks in her district in an effort to obtain voting tabulars.

🟣March 18, 2021: Michael Lynch, an unindicted private investigator in the scheme, allegedly went to Lake City in Massaukee County and obtained a voting tabulator and laptop from the township clerk, bringing the laptop to a hotel in Oakland County.🟣

🟣March 21, 2021: Lynch allegedly obtains three more voting tabulators in northern Michigan’s Roscommon County with the assistance of local officials. Lynch also later reportedly obtained another tabulator from Barry County’s Irving Township. The tabulators, prosecutor DJ Hilson said, were also taken to Oakland County to be purportedly examined for evidence of election fraud.

May 18, 2021: An election fraud lawsuit DePerno files on behalf of an Antrim County resident, William Bailey, is dismissed by a local judge. In the suit, DePerno used the so-called analysis performed on

Dec. 3, 2021: Powell and eight other plaintiffs’ attorneys in the rejected election fraud suit are collectively sanctioned by the federal court in Detroit $175,000 for filing a “frivilous” lawsuit. They were previously ordered to also attend legal education classes in election law as part of a reprimand for the suit that was quickly ruled meritless after failing to bring forward substantive evidence.

🟡Jan. 14, 2022: Attorney General Dana Nessel refers her department’s investigation into the fake electors to federal authorities, saying she is still considering federal charges.

🟣Feb. 10, 2022: Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson asks state law enforcement officials to look investigate illegal third-party access to voting tabulators.

🟣Aug. 8, 2022: Nessel requests the appointment of a special prosecutor to make charging decisions in the voting tabulator investigation, revealing that DePerno is one of those under investigation and she will be facing him in the November election later that year. Nessel later defeats DePerno in the general election by about 9 percentage points.

Dec. 9, 2022: The Michigan Supreme Court denies DePerno’s appeal of his election fraud lawsuit’s dismissal in Antrim County, effectively ending his legal battle for the issue.

Dec. 22, 2022: After interviewing hundreds of witnesses, The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol begins to release transcripts of their interviews, revealing previously unknown information. Shirkey had been subject to a “pressure campaign” of sorts from activists in the weeks after the election and fielded multiple calls from Trump. “I was tired of hearing all of these loosely calculated claims and allegations but no substance to back them up,” Shirkey told investigators. “Something as serious as this, it was my strong personal feeling that we were destroying the country by talking like this without having something to follow it up with.”

🟡Jan. 6, 2023: Nessel announces she has reopened the fake electors case after federal authorities don’t move forward with charges in the case

🟡Jul. 17, 2023: Charges are announced against the 16 people who purported to be electoral college representatives. All have pleaded not guilty to eight felony charges, with preliminary examinations scheduled for later this year.

🟣Aug. 1, 2023: Court filings reveal DePerno and Rendon have been indicted by a grand jury in Oakland County. DePerno faces four felony charges while Rendon was charged with two. Special prosecutor DJ Hilson notes “there is still more to come.”

⚫Aug. 1, 2023: Special counsel Jack Smith announces a grand jury in Washington, DC, has indicted Trump for his actions to try and subvert the election. The charges include conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.

🟣Aug. 3, 2023: More court filings reveal another attorney involved in the scheme, Stefanie Lambert Junttila, has also been charged with four counts. Hilson later announces the other six individuals referred to him for investigation will not face charges.

🟢Aug. 15, 2023: Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis announces a grand jury indictment against Trump and 18 associates, citing the group’s efforts in Michigan repeatedly as evidence of illegal intentions.