A Michigan candidate for statewide office is running amid the possibility of being indicted by the very office that he’s seeking, with a vow to indict the current officeholder if he wins. The office is attorney general, the state's chief law enforcement officer. Matthew DePerno, the former President Trump-endorsed Republican nominee, facing Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel, according to News From The States. DePerno was a Portage-based tax attorney. The path from attorney to major party candidate for statewide office began with DePerno’s filing of a lawsuit in northern Michigan's Antrim County contesting the November 2020 election results. The case was amplified by Trump and his supporters to push the disproved falsehood that the 2020 election was rigged While pro-Trump rioters were breaking into the U.S. Capitol to stop the certification of electoral votes for Joe Biden on Jan. 6, 2021 DePerno was meeting with former Assistant Secretary of State Robert Destro. The Antrim County lawsuit was dismissed, but not before DePerno was able to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in pursuit of his claims.
An investigative summary released by the Michigan Attorney General’s Office in August alleges that DePerno had engaged in criminal activity in violation of the law. The summary was filed in a petition seeking to name a special prosecutor to investigate allegations that DePerno and eight others conspired to illegally obtain and tamper with voting tabulators. The petition indicated that digital IDs used as evidence in DePerno’s Antrim County lawsuit matched those found on voting machines seized as part of an investigation by the AG’s office and Michigan State Police. They were also the same machines featured in the “splash page” on his website. The petition also stated that DePerno was present in an Oakland County hotel room in early 2021 during a test of one of the illegally obtained tabulators. Despite openly bragging about gaining access to a voting tabulator, DePerno has dismissed Nessel’s request for a special prosecutor to avoid a conflict of interest as being politically motivated. He has also said she “should be impeached” over the investigation and repeatedly called for her to be imprisoned.
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