WASHINGTON — When President Donald Trump summoned Michigan state lawmakers to the White House just two weeks after the November 2020 election, his directive was for the group to "have some backbone and do the right thing."
That's according to the report released Monday by the U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, citing a previously undisclosed interview with Republican then-state House Speaker Lee Chatfield, who told the panel he understood Trump to be urging the lawmakers to overturn the election by naming Michigan’s Electoral College electors for Trump.
In addition to Trump, the Oval Office meeting included his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, by phone, going through a “litany” of false allegations about alleged fraud in Michigan’s election, according to testimony by Republican Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey to the committee.
Five other Michigan GOP state lawmakers also attended the meeting, which occurred as Trump allies sought to subvert the state's election, which Democratic President-elect Joe Biden won by 154,000 votes, or 3 percentage points.
But Shirkey told Trump that he wouldn’t do anything that would violate Michigan law, according to the committee.
After the meeting concluded, Shirkey and Chatfield issued a joint statement, saying: “We have not yet been made aware of any information that would change the outcome of the election in Michigan and as legislative leaders, we will follow the law and follow the normal process regarding Michigan’s electors, just as we have said throughout this election.”
At the time, Chatfield, a Levering Republican, and Shirkey, a Clarklake Republican, also claimed they had highlighted during the meeting their desire to see "further federal dollars" appropriated for Michigan as it battled the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chatfield's "informal" interview with the committee was Oct. 15, 2021, according to the report, and Shirkey's transcribed interview took place on June 8 of this year, just two weeks before his testimony was featured during a committee hearing.
The new details about the Michigan lawmakers' Nov. 20, 2020, meeting at the White House appeared in an executive summary of the Jan. 6 panel's final report, which detailed Trump's attempts to pressure officials at multiple levels of government to overturn the election, as well as his role in inciting the violent attack on the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021.
"When Trump couldn’t convince Shirkey and Chatfield to change the outcome of the election in Michigan during that meeting or in calls after, he or his team maliciously tweeted out Shirkey’s personal cellphone number and a number for Chatfield that turned out to be wrong," the report reads.
The committee in a footnote cited a Detroit News report about Shirkey receiving nearly 4,000 text messages in the aftermath of the Trump tweet, and the story of a private citizen, formerly of Petoskey, being "bombarded mistakenly" with election-related phone calls and text messages.
"None of Donald Trump’s efforts ultimately succeeded in changing the official results in any state," according to the report, which laid out Trump's efforts to influence state lawmakers in Georgia and other states.
"That these efforts had failed was apparent to Donald Trump and his co-conspirators well before January 6th. By January 6th, there was no evidence at all that a majority of any state legislature would even attempt to change its electoral votes."
Chatfield and Shirkey were joined at the White House that day by Reps. Jason Wentworth, a Farwell Republican, and Jim Lilly, a Park Township Republican; as well as Sens. Tom Barrett, a Charlotte Republican; Dan Lauwers, a Brockway Township Republican; and Aric Nesbitt, a Lawton Republican. Wentworth went on to become speaker of the House last year after Chatfield departed because of term limits.
After an 18-month investigation, the Jan. 6 panel voted Monday to refer to the Justice Department recommendations that Trump be charged with four crimes: obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress; conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to make false statements; and inciting, assisting or aiding and comforting an insurrection.
It marked the first time Congress is making such a referral in regard to a former president. However, charging decisions are up to the Department of Justice, where special counsel Jack Smith is pursuing an independent investigation into Trump's efforts to stay in power.
U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican and vice chair of the panel, said in her opening statement that Trump's actions constituted "an utter moral failure and a clear dereliction of duty," adding that "he is unfit for any office."
The panel painted a picture of the former president as disregarding relevant failed litigation contesting election results, as well as counsel from his own experts and the Justice Department that his election fraud claims were false.
The lawmakers said Trump pushed ahead with efforts to overturn the election nonetheless, reporting that Trump raised hundreds of millions of dollars with "false representations" made to his online donors. The proceeds have been used in "concerning" ways, said committee member and Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., including efforts to provide or offer employment to witnesses.
The report argues the case that, at minimum, Trump tried to obstruct an official proceeding of Congress based on his plan to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to "prevent" or delay certification of the election at the joint session of the House and Senate.
But the panel also opined that such a charge under federal law could also be based on the plan to create and transmit to the executive and legislative branches fake electoral slates — including a slate from Michigan — that were "ultimately intended to facilitate an unlawful action by Vice President Pence — to refuse to count legitimate, certified electoral votes during Congress’s official January 6th proceeding."
The panel in its report also said sufficient evidence exists for an obstruction referral for former Trump lawyer John Eastman and "certain other" Trump associates, arguing the evidence shows that Eastman knew that Pence could not refuse to count electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, under the law.
The elements of the conspiracy to make a false statement charge are in reference to Trump "personally participating" with others in a "scheme" to have fake electors meet, cast votes and submit their votes to Congress and the National Archives, when the certifications signed by the Trump electors in Michigan and six other states were "patently false."
The report specifically cites testimony by Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel of Michigan, who testified to the committee that in a call shortly before Dec. 14, 2020, Trump and Eastman directly requested that the RNC organize the effort to have these fake electors meet and cast their votes.
A footnote indicates the committee got copies of the fake slates of Trump electors in Michigan and six other states from the National Archives, as well as copies of the mailing envelopes. The report doesn't refer the fake electors themselves for prosecution.
"Multiple Republicans who were persuaded to sign the fake certificates also testified that they felt misled or betrayed, and would not have done so had they known that the fake votes would be used on January 6th without an intervening court ruling," the report states.
Despite the pressure from Trump, both Pence and the Senate parliamentarian refused to recognize the fake electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, as the report notes.
Earlier this year, Democratic Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel's office referred to federal prosecutors an investigation into the pro-Trump electors, and some of the 16 Michigan Republicans who signed the certificate falsely claiming to cast the state's electoral votes for Trump received grand jury subpoenas from federal officials over the summer.
It remains unclear whether the Michigan Republicans were sought as witnesses or targets of the investigation.
At a June hearing, the panel played recorded testimony by former Michigan GOP Chairwoman Laura Cox that Trump supporters at one point considered hiding in the state Capitol overnight to boost their bid to overturn the election results.
Cox said a lawyer working with the Trump campaign informed her of plans to get inside the Michigan Capitol ahead of the Dec. 14, 2020, meeting of the Electoral College. That attorney was Robert Norton, a Hillsdale College official.
"He told me that the Michigan Republican electors were planning to meet in the Capitol and hide overnight so that they could fulfill the role of casting their vote per law in the Michigan chambers," Cox said. "And I told him in no uncertain terms that that was insane and inappropriate."
The Michigan Republicans didn't ultimately follow through on that plan and, instead, the 16 Trump electors met inside state GOP headquarters in Lansing where they signed the certificates and then went over to the Capitol building. There, state troopers refused to let them in, as the building was closed to the public.
Finally, the charge of aiding the insurrection stems from the committee's narrative that Trump encouraged supporters to travel to Washington ahead of Jan. 6, 2021, and that during the riot at the Capitol, Trump refused to condemn the violence or urge the crowd to disperse, even though staffers and family members urged him to do so.
"The one thing that all of these people immediately understood was required: Instruct his supporters to leave the Capitol. The president repeatedly refused pleas as he watched the violence at the Capitol on television," said U.S. Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., during Monday's hearing.
She added that multiple witnesses, including Trump's White House counsel, testified that during that day, Trump never spoke with the National Guard, the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice or any law enforcement agency, nor issued orders to deploy a law enforcement agency to assist.
Trump continues to make false claims of election fraud dating back two years. He has long attacked the committee’s work as a partisan "witch hunt," criticized witnesses and repeatedly denied wrongdoing.
On the social media platform Truth Social, ABC News said Trump on Sunday posted: "Republicans and Patriots all over the land must stand strong and united against the Thugs and Scoundrels of the Unselect Committee. It will be a dark period in American history, but with darkness comes light!!!"
Trump also posted links to two tweets he sent on Jan. 6, 2021, that urged support for police and for protesters to remain "peaceful," though they were posted after the violence had started at the Capitol.
The Jan. 6 panel also referred four members of Congress to the House Ethics Committee to be sanctioned for failure to comply with subpoenas issued by the committee. The lawmakers are Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California — who is expected to be speaker next Congress — and Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, and Andy Biggs of Arizona.
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(Detroit News staff writer Craig Mauger contributed to this story.)
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