Most of the false electors recently indicted in Michigan for submitting fake certificates and posing as legitimate electors are big names in state politics. One is a national committeewoman for the Republican Party. One is the Michigan Republican Party co-chair. Among the 16 people indicted this week are multiple county chairs, board members, a former Michigan secretary of state, and the current mayor of a small city.
But a small handful of the false electors had less experience with Republican politics. Some of them turned up at their local primary, raised their hand to be a Trump delegate, and ended up as one of the would-be electors had Trump actually won. That’s exactly what Michele Lundgren, a photographer from Detroit, says happened to her.
Then, on Dec. 14, 2020, Lundgren says she received an urgent call from someone in the Michigan Republican Party asking her to come to the party offices in Lansing. In the basement of that building, 16 people met and signed a certificate swearing that Donald Trump had won Michigan and they were the duly appointed electors to represent Trump. That illegal scheme ended with each of the 16 being the subject of eight felony charges, each of which carries a potential sentence of 14 years.
Now Lundgren says she is the innocent victim of a “scam” and that Trump attorneys didn’t just forge a fake certificate—they also forged her signature.
In an interview with news station WDIV, Lundgren said she was told her husband could not come along to the meeting, plied with “coffee and cake,” and warned not to take any photos of the proceedings. She also claims that she didn’t actually know they were there to make a claim of being electors, but only that they were gathered as “Trump delegates.”
The most shocking of her claims is that the false electors didn’t actually sign the (poorly) forged certificate making a false claim that Trump had won. Instead, says Lundgren, they were asked to sign in “on an index card.” Then their names were somehow transferred to the certificate.
Lundgren said, “We signed a sign-in sheet with our names, it fits right into the real electoral ballot.”
Though she doesn’t say who called her to the meeting, who spoke to the false electors, or who gave them tasty coffee and cake, Lundgren doesn’t shy away from laying blame for the whole scheme.
“We walked to the Capitol building—it’s all in the news, it’s all in Google—with attorney Ian Northon. A Trump attorney,” Lundgren said.
Northon would be this guy. He appeared on Lou Dobbs’ show to argue that state legislatures should have the task of certifying electors, and to say that Michigan “needs to send a second slate of electors to make sure that there’s accuracy and integrity in the election.”
He doesn’t get around to explaining how sending a set of electors for the losing candidate makes things better. He does go on to insist that unless election officials can prove a negative by somehow showing that there was no fraud, it can be presumed to be a “bad election,” and the state legislature gets to step in and pick whichever candidate they prefer.
Northon is a member of the powerful conservative Thomas More Society and helped run its Amistad Project (both of which seem to come from the Republican tradition of taking names out of history and completely twisting their meaning). But Michigan was the focus of his activities in 2020. Lundgren doesn’t actually say that it was Northon who took her signature from a sign-in sheet and moved it to the false certificate, but she certainly implies that he was the one who knew what was really going on.
However, at the end of the day, Lundgren’s claims of innocence are a little hard to swallow. First, the group of false electors tried to get into the state Capitol and told reporters they were there to “vote for Trump.” Then they moved to the Republican headquarters, where it seems very likely that they voted for Trump.
Also, in addition to being a delegate for Trump, Lundgren is also a failed Republican candidate for Congress. She may have been beaten 92 to 8, but she still presumably knows how elections work and had more connections with the local party than “just a delegate.” It’s hard to believe she didn’t understand what was going on when she rushed to Lansing for this emergency gathering of delegates.
Still, if Northon (or someone else) did either move the signatures to a different document or disguise the nature of the document they were signing, that’s a clear case of forgery. Seeing Northon disbarred and locked up, along with other officials aware of the scheme, would not be a bad thing.
It is never too early for a case to involve Republicans pointing fingers at each other. It’s a good sign that when this goes to trial, the false electors are going to have plenty to say about the people who brought them together.