LANSING, Mich. — The U.S. House committee investigating former President Donald Trump's efforts to hold on to power has been probing Michigan Republicans' push to surge supporters after the 2020 election to the former TCF Center, where Detroit's absentee ballots were counted.
Republican groups in Michigan urgently told their members to travel to Detroit on Nov. 4, 2020, to monitor the counting of absentee ballots in the Democratic stronghold. The rush of people led to clashes over GOP observers' access and an unsuccessful lawsuit by Trump's campaign to temporarily halt the tallying of votes in the state's largest city.
"Do not let criminals steal our country," one email from the North Oakland Republican Club said on Nov. 4, 2020, the day after the election.
An employee of Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson's office provided the email to Daniel George, senior investigative counsel for the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on Dec. 3, according to documents obtained through an open records request.
Benson's office has declined to discuss the details of its exchanges with the U.S. House committee. But investigators for the panel have been asking questions about what transpired at TCF Center, according to two sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
In his message to George on Dec. 3, Michael Brady, Benson's chief legal director, described the Republican club's email as being part of the "topics discussed and items you had asked for" during a Nov. 30 meeting.
"It was certainly not the only medium used to recruit challengers that day," Brady wrote to George.
Many Democrats view what occurred at the TCF Center — now called Huntington Place and previously named Cobo Center — as part of a sustained campaign to undermine people's faith in absentee voting, which Trump launched before the election.
But the former president's supporters contend they had legitimate concerns about what was occurring with vote-counting in Detroit. Rocky Raczkowski, chairman of the Oakland County Republican Party, said he and others wanted to ensure there were no "shenanigans" happening.
“There is nothing nefarious about that," Raczkowski said. "That is transparency in government.”
The Democrat-led U.S. House select committee has said it's seeking information about attempts in multiple states to overturn the results of the 2020 election. By examining what occurred at TCF Center, the panel could be spotlighting one of the main topics that Trump supporters used in their push to reverse Michigan's vote.
Aghogho Edevbie, a Michigan voting rights advocate, said if what happened at TCF Center wasn't part of Republicans' plan to overturn Democrat Joe Biden's victory, it might have become part of the plan by happenstance.
"Whether that was part of some grand conspiracy, I don't know," said Edevbie, who was at TCF Center the day after the election. "It was certainly done in an effort, in my opinion, to slow down and obstruct the reporting of election results."
Many of the same individuals who were involved in lawsuits to change the outcome of Michigan's election — and in submitting a false certificate attempting to cast Michigan's electoral votes for Trump, which the House committee is also probing — were part of the effort to draw Republicans to the TCF Center.
The Michigan Conservative Coalition posted a video from the convention center on Nov. 4, 2020, with the text: "Democrats stealing the Michigan election!!"
Michigan Conservative Coalition's leadership has included Meshawn Maddock, now co-chairwoman of the state GOP, and Marian Sheridan, a party vice chairwoman. They were two of the Republicans who signed on to the "alternate" electors certificate that claimed Trump won the state after Biden officially won by more than 154,000 votes.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has referred an investigation into the certificate to federal prosecutors. The Democratic attorney general has suggested it violated state laws against forgery. And last week, the U.S. House committee subpoenaed two other Michigan Republicans and 12 individuals in other states who signed the certificates.
The Michigan Conservative Coalition touted the false certificate in a press release on Dec. 17, 2020, with its president, Rosanne Ponkowski, saying it was their "civic duty" to send another slate of electors to the federal government.
Matt Marko, president of the North Oakland Republican Club, sent his own call for volunteers to go to TCF Center at 12:17 p.m. on the day after the election. Its subject line was "We need your help - Poll challengers needed right now - COBO Room 260 - Do not let criminals steal our country."
Edevbie, who was at TCF Center, said he believes Room 260 was being used as a staging area for Republicans.
"Come to TCF (Cobo) right now to help with the additional votes coming in," Marko's message said.
In an interview, Marko said the Republican poll challengers who had been at TCF Center through Election Day and that night were tired and needed to be replaced on Nov. 4, 2020. Republicans wanted to have as many observers as possible to watch the vote-counting process, he said. But Marko denied being the author of the email.
“I didn’t write that," he said.
Marko, who said he hadn't been contacted by the U.S. House committee, said he had simply forwarded the text of a message someone sent him. Marko said he believed it was Raczkowski, the Oakland County GOP chairman who asked him to recruit more people to head to the TCF Center.
Raczkowski denied writing the email that Marko sent but confirmed that he was recruiting people to go to the TCF Center in the days after the Nov. 3, 2020, election.
A Nov. 4, 2020, post on the Oakland County Republican Party's Facebook page included images of Uncle Sam and said people were needed "to secure each legally voted ballot." The post, like Marko's email, also directed people to Room 260.
"You will get a short training and credentials to make sure we have a fair & just election," the post said. "Join us now."
Raczkowski said he believed he received word from someone with the Michigan Republican Party that more observers were needed at TCF Center. The social media messages helped spur a crowd to arrive as ballots were still being counted. There was a chaotic confrontation with protesters, and police barred Republican and Democratic poll challengers from entering the room where the tallying was happening.
Chris Thomas, Michigan's former elections director who helped Detroit with the TCF operation in 2020, previously told the state Senate Oversight Committee the mood inside the convention center changed on the afternoon of Nov. 4, 2020.
At one point, Thomas said, challengers inside the building were chanting about "stopping the vote." He described the scene as "pretty incredible."
"Things started to get out of hand," Thomas said.
Lawrence Garcia, the city of Detroit's corporation counsel and an election commissioner, said there were about 225 Republican, 250 Democratic and around 70 independent challengers at TCF Center.
There was supposed to be one challenger from each party for each of the 134 absentee counting boards, Garcia said at the time. So officials started limiting access and eventually put cardboard over windows because, they said, people were banging on the windows and videotaping the counting process.
Both moves inspired Republicans to allege that wrongdoing was occurring and being hidden in Detroit — criticisms some still maintain.
"President Trump's campaign has not been provided with meaningful access to numerous counting locations to observe the opening of ballots and the counting process as guaranteed by Michigan law," said Bill Stepien, Trump's campaign manager, in a press release on Nov. 4, 2020.
On Nov. 5, 2020, Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal attorney, retweeted messages about TCF Center, saying the doors had been locked and Detroit officials were not allowing the public to observe the counting process. One of his posts was shared more than 3,000 times, but his claims have been rejected by election officials.
Trump himself claimed on the evening of Nov. 5, 2020, that his campaign had been barred from observing vote counting in Detroit. He also falsely claimed that night that he had "won" Michigan.
The counting of ballots at TCF Center was completed by about 9 p.m. on Nov. 4, 2020, Daniel Baxter, special projects consultant for the city's department of elections, told the media at the time. He said a record number of ballots had been tabulated. There were 174,384 absentee ballots counted, according to city records.
Overall, in Detroit, Biden won 94% of the votes cast while Trump got 5%, an improvement from 3% the Republican received four years earlier.
The Republican-controlled Michigan Senate Oversight Committee spent months examining the 2020 election. Its June 2021 report said the acts of GOP officials "furthered the crisis" at the TCF Center "by putting out the call to other members and citizens to descend on the location to stop what was described and presented as a stealing of the election."
"The descent into disorder with so many extremely concerned citizens elicited responses from poll workers that seemed necessary to them at the time, such as covering windows, calling police, denying lawful challenges and removing challengers," the report said.
"Those actions by both sides were not always lawful or wise, and increased the angst and fears of the untrained challengers and observers, as well as the many in the public who did not understand what was shown to them by the media," the report added.
However, the committee found "no evidence fraudulent activities were undertaken or that such actions led to irreparable harm to ballots or vote counting."
Edevbie, Michigan state director for the organization All Voting is Local, said he believes the seeds for what eventually happened at the TCF Center had been planted much earlier. He noted Trump had repeatedly questioned the mass mailing of absentee ballot applications in multiple states.
"I think the fact that people went down to TCF was a natural next step," Edevbie said.
The Democrat-controlled U.S. House voted to form the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol on June 30, 2021. Trump has criticized the panel and in a Thursday statement labeled it "corrupt."
The Detroit News-news
