(Source: MIRS.news, Published 06/13/2024) (WARREN) – The trio charged in a signature fraud case that kept eight candidates off the 2022 ballot are headed to trial. 

District Judge John Chmura said there was enough evidence to send Shawn Wilmoth, 36, of First Choice Consulting LLC, his wife Jamie Lynn Wilmoth-Goodin and Willie Reed, of Florida-based Mack Douglass LLC, a third-party political service provider, to trial. 

“The court finds that defendants, for purposes of a preliminary examination and probable cause standard, knew that the signatures obtained were fraudulently obtained,” the Judge said. “There’s evidence to indicate they had that knowledge. … Mr. Wilmoth was the primary driver of all of this.” 

Chmura said “some fraud” is corroborated based on the two validators who testified that they had concerns about the signatures, which the judge said weren’t just an issue of not matching those on file with the Secretary of State’s office, but were signatures “simply signed” by the petition gatherers. 

Chmura said there was testimony that indicated Wilmoth told the validators that they “would go down with him.” At the minimum, he noted, the defendants were put on notice there were issues with the signatures. 

“The very act of the defendants submitting these documents to the Secretary of State when they had reason to believe the signatures were fraudulently obtained is election fraud,” the Judge said. 

As the Judge spoke, Wilmoth shook his head no. 

After issuing his opinion, Chmura directly addressed the three defendants, telling them it took longer to issue his opinion than he expected because their attorneys presented “persuasive arguments.” 

“I think they did a whale of a good job representing you,” Chmura said. 

The Wilmoth couple and their attorneys declined to comment. Reed and his attorney weren’t available as they appeared via Zoom. 

The trio face more than two dozen counts, including conducting a criminal enterprise, false pretenses and election law forgery – all of which Chmura said the Attorney General’s office showed to a probable cause standard. 

Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a statement the signatures were “clear forgeries and fabrications” that harmed the campaigns, which had no remedy. 

The trio’s alleged conduct kept five gubernatorial candidates – retired Detroit Police Chief James CRAIG, business executive Perry Johnson, MSP Captain Michael Brown, financial advisor Michael Markey Jr. and Donna Bradenburg – and two judicial candidates, off the 2022 primary ballot due to a combined 68,000 fraudulent signatures  

The five-day preliminary examination for each defendant began in January with two women hired to collect valid signatures testifying that the Wilmoth couple and Reed repeatedly ignored their concerns about forged signatures, and that Wilmoth became “quite frustrated because we were asking him a lot” and “he had other things to do.”  

In February, former gubernatorial candidate Ryan Kelley testified that he paid $15,000 to Reed’s company to gather signatures, but he received nothing in return. 

The testimony phase of the hearing concluded in March when both sides presented their arguments on whether the defendants should go to circuit court for trial (See “No Decision Yet On Whether Trio Charged In Signature Fraud Case Will Head To Trial,” 3/20/24). 

The defense attorneys argued there was no criminal intent on behalf of their clients. 

Assistant Attorney General Christopher Kessel previously argued that testimony showed that “obvious fraud” became apparent as early as March 2022 when validators expressed concern about fraud. At the time, Kessel said, the Wilmoth couple and Reed had signed contracts from Bradenburg and Brown and they took on new clients as late as April that year.