DePerno Presents Himself As Victim Of 'Vindictive' Attorney General

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 03/04/2026) A House subcommittee gave former Republican Attorney General candidate Matt DePerno an opportunity Wednesday morning to argue that Attorney General Dana Nessel is using her office to seek political retribution against him for openly pursuing four felony charges against him for challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election in Antrim County.

DePerno said his July 2023 felony indictment for allegedly orchestrating the collection of voting tabulators in Roscommon County was punishment for becoming the public face behind what Nessel saw as Michigan's election conspiracy movement. He claims Nessel's office acted as opposing counsel in the Antrim County civil case while investigating him criminally, which is inappropriate.

"This is an attempt to show every other attorney out there that if you file a lawsuit challenging the election you will be prosecuted by Dana Nessel," DePerno said.

At the core of this well-publicized incident is that DePerno, former Rep. Daire Rendon and attorney Stephanie Lambert allegedly worked with a proclaimed election audit investigator, Ben Cotton, to take a Richland Township tabulator out of Roscommon County to an Oakland County hotel room, where they opened it up and looked for evidence that results were altered.

The point was to provide hard evidence to verify President Donald Trump's claim that the 2020 election was "stolen" from him through widespread fraud, something that's never been proven in a courtroom.

While DePerno isn't accused of physically taking the machine, Cotton apparently is prepared to testify that DePerno orchestrated the whole thing.

The Attorney General sought a special prosecutor on Aug. 8, 2022, to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest, but DePerno claims the fact she waited so long to move forward with any case at all shows she's been pulling the strings behind the scenes to punish "election deniers" like himself. Her public statement on the matter backed him up on that, he said.

Muskegon County Prosecutor DJ Hilson was appointed the special prosecutor.

The impact has been "devastating" to his business, DePerno said, and to his reputation.

"It affects everything," he said. "You know, not many people want to hire the attorney that's got four felony charges against him. I have people come up to me and say, 'Nice to see you. When did you get out of prison?' As if I ever went to prison. The narrative that's been created by the news media and Attorney Nessel's office and the prolonged length that this has occurred without a preliminary hearing is devastating."

Nessel spokesperson Kimberly Bush told MIRS after the hearing nobody is happy when they are criminally prosecuted, including DePerno, but that doesn't entitle him to his own facts.

The Department of State alerted the Attorney General's office in February 2022 that at least "one unnamed third party" gained inappropriate access to tabulators in Roscommon County's Richfield Township. Once the case was assigned to Hilson on Sep. 8, 2022, by the Prosecuting Attorneys Coordinating Council (PACC), he had exclusive authority over the case.

"The Department of Attorney General and Attorney General Dana Nessel have had no influence, special insights, or control over this prosecution," Bush said. "Special prosecutor assignments are not 'an unusual process.' In 2025, there were 693 cases placed in other offices, and 81 already assigned this year. …

"Matt DePerno is a discredited Big Lie conspiracy peddler and a desperate criminal defendant, the likes of which this office is not unfamiliar. It's unfortunate that he's found support from the Republicans on this committee," Bush said.

DePerno played for the House Oversight Weaponization of State Government Subcommittee audio revealing that prosecutors were forum-shopping his case. The criminal case against DePerno is nearing its third year and the case hasn't reached the preliminary exam stage in district court.

He claims the Attorney General is purposely dragging out this case to further financially punish him, although DePerno himself has filed several motions that have pushed the case well beyond what can reasonably be described as speedy.

"What I have done is file motions to obtain information from the prosecuting attorney's office," he said.

On the audio that DePerno presented, Bush said this case was unique because DePerno was charged along with former Rep. Rendon, and there were concerns about finding an unbiased jury pool in Rendon's home county.

"It is wholly unsurprising that those suspected and charged with felonies may be unhappy with conversations surrounding their criminality," she said.