(Source: MIRS.news, Published 09/12/2023) An attorney for one of the 16 GOP would-be 2020 electors said his client acted “at the direction” of former President Donald Trump and other federal officers.
Defense attorney Paul Stablein’s Monday filing asks the U.S. District Court Western District to move the charges filed against his client, Amy Facchinello, from Ingham County Circuit Court to federal court.
“Ms. Facchinello has numerous federal defenses, including official immunity, federal preemption, supremacy clause immunity, defense under the Due Process Clause and First Amendment defense,” Stablein wrote. “… Attorneys for the President specifically instructed Ms. Facchinello that the Republican electors’ meeting and casting their ballots on December 14, 2020, was consistent with counsel's advice and was necessary to preserve the presidential election contest.”
In addition, Stablein noted, the court should “bar the state’s prosecution, which seeks to criminalize a political dispute that only Congress possesses the authority to resolve” and that his client’s actions “assisted the President of the Senate and the Archivist of the United States in carrying out their duties.”
Stablein did not identify the attorneys representing Trump, but elector Mayra Rodriguez, who also is charged, told the Jan. 6 Select Committee that Trump campaign aide Shawn Flynn was present and spoke to the electors.
Facchinello, a Grand Blanc Community Schools Board member, as well as other former party chair Meshawn Maddock, National Republican Committeewoman Kathleen Berden, former House candidate Michele Goder Lundgren and others, are each charged with multiple counts alleging forgery for signing a certificate claiming to be the “duly elected” electors for the 2020 president election.
They are also charged with conspiracy to commit uttering and publishing and election law forgery.
Maddock has previously said the Trump campaign “asked us” to make the effort.
President Joe Biden won Michigan by 154,000 votes in 2020, but Trump and his supporters maintain he won.
According to the filing, Fachinello received a telephone call on Dec. 13, 2020, from the Michigan Republican Party asking her to appear in Lansing on Dec. 14, 2020, when the 16 GOP members charged met to sign the certificate.
