LANSING, Mich. — Michigan Republican attorney general candidate Matt DePerno told a crowd last year he had a "lab" where he could take people and show them how election equipment can be manipulated, according to a previously unreported video obtained by The Detroit News.
The footage, dated Sept. 9, 2021, and shared in a Facebook group, appears to support some of the allegations brought by Attorney General Dana Nessel's office, which has said DePerno was involved in an effort to gain access to voting machines in Michigan and run "tests" on them.
DePerno, a lawyer from Kalamazoo who rose to prominence advancing unproven election fraud claims, is challenging Nessel to be Michigan's top law enforcement official. In the video clip, DePerno says Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson was "trying to find" his "lab."
DePerno said he wouldn't tell the crowd where it was located.
"It's pretty easy to manipulate that system is what we found," DePerno said of the election system. "I can show you today, if I have a tabulator in front of me, if I took you to my lab, which Secretary of State Benson is trying to find and I am not going to tell you where it is.
"But if we went there, all of us, crammed in a room, I could show you how to reopen an election, stuff a bunch of ballots into it, close out that election and print off a tape that says, Nov. 3 (the date of the 2020 presidential election) at 8:03 p.m. It's pretty simple."
It would take actual election equipment, including a tabulator and access to an election management system, to pull off such a demonstration, said Chris Thomas, Michigan's former elections director, who served in the position for more than three decades.
DePerno's campaign didn't address the video when asked about it Friday. The only reason "we continue to talk about this political witch hunt is because Dana Nessel is well aware she can't defend her lackluster record," said Tyson Shepard, a spokesman for DePerno.
"I challenge the media to press Nessel on why she refuses to debate Matt DePerno," Shepard said. "The people of Michigan deserve more than a Lansing politician who continues to hide and refuses to defend her radical stances to the voters."
Nessel said Wednesday she won't debate DePerno this fall because of his "inability to distinguish fact from fiction and his persistent use of disparaging, dangerous tropes."
On Aug. 5, Nessel's office sought the appointment of a special prosecutor to consider an array of potential criminal charges against nine individuals, including DePerno, state Rep. Daire Rendon, R-Lake City, and Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf.
According to the allegations stemming from a joint investigation by the Michigan State Police and the Attorney General's Office, the group convinced local clerks to hand over five tabulators, took the tabulators to hotels or rental properties in Oakland County, broke into the machines, printed "fake ballots" and performed "tests" on the equipment.
The potential charges in the case include using a computer system to commit a crime, willfully damaging a voting machine, malicious destruction of property, fraudulent access to a computer or computer system and false pretenses, the petition for a special prosecutor said. No one has been charged.
DePerno has denied the allegations, saying they're politically motivated.
"Ninety percent of the facts that she lays out, that she calls facts, in her petition are either false or I have no knowledge of what she's talking about," the GOP candidate said during a radio interview on Aug. 8.
During an interview Monday with The News, DePerno said the claims against him didn't matter because access to tabulators was given freely by local clerks.
He also said "expert witnesses" were doing analysis and providing him information as part of a lawsuit he was leading to challenge the November 2020 election in northern Michigan's Antrim County, where initial results incorrectly showed Democrat Joe Biden beating Republican Donald Trump.
"I was not in charge of the investigation," DePerno said.
Asked who was, the lawyer responded, "the expert witnesses."
Four individuals — Ben Cotton, Jeff Lenberg, Douglas Logan and James Penrose — "broke into" five tabulators and performed "tests" on the equipment, the Attorney General Office's petition for a special prosecutor says.
In spring 2021, DePerno gave multiple interviews about a video from One America News that was posted on his law firm's website. The clip showed one of DePerno's cybersecurity experts, Lenberg, working with a Dominion Voting Systems tabulator and running ballots through it on May 3, 2021, in a Royal Oak apartment.
One America News claimed the video demonstrated how voting systems can be compromised to manipulate results. During a May 7, 2021, appearance on a podcast called "Dark to Light with Frank & Beanz," DePerno promoted the One America News report.
"What machine is he using? Is he using an actual Antrim County machine?" one of the podcast hosts asked DePerno about Lenberg.
"We can't tell you what machine he's using," DePerno replied. "But he's using a Dominion voting tabulator. And it's a tabulator that is of all the same specifications of anything that we would find in Antrim County. Same model. Same brand. Same programming. Same everything."
It's unclear where and when DePerno was speaking in the new video obtained by The News. However, the clip appeared to be dated Sept. 9, 2021.
According to an Aug. 5 letter from the Attorney General's Office to Benson, someone who hasn't been identified by authorities delivered a tabulator that had been taken from Lake City Township back to the clerk on Sept. 10, 2021.
The seal number on the machine was covered over with red tape in the same manner as the tabulator shown in the Lenberg video, according to Nessel's office.
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