Criminal charges were unveiled on Thursday against a third person in an alleged plot in Michigan to gain illegal access to voting equipment in the wake of the 2020 election.
Prosecutors charged Stefanie Lambert, an attorney who has pushed election-denial conspiracies in the courtroom, with four felonies: undue possession of a voting machine, conspiracy to commit undue possession of a voting machine, conspiracy to commit unauthorized access to a computer system, and willfully damaging a voting machine.
Each charge carries a prison term of up to five years.
ADVERTISEMENT
Lambert was arraigned before a judge on Thursday afternoon and pleaded not guilty to the charges, according to the Associated Press.
Lambert will be the last person charged in the investigation, according to a statement from Muskegon County Prosecutor D.J. Hilson, who served as special prosecutor in the case. Her indictment was issued two days after two other people, unsuccessful state attorney general candidate Matthew DePerno and former state Rep. Daire Rendon, were charged in connection with the alleged conspiracy.
Investigators with Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office named six other suspects in handing off their inquiry to Hilson, who convened a citizen grand jury in March to hear evidence in the matter. Among those under suspicion but not charged were Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf and Doug Logan, the former chief executive of security firm Cyber Ninjas.
Days before DePerno and Rendon were charged, Lambert went on a conservative podcast to say that she’d been told she’d been indicted by Hilson. “I know that I’ve done absolutely nothing illegal,” she said. It was not immediately clear why her charges were issued after those of her alleged co-conspirators.
Along with DePerno and Rendon, Lambert was accused by Nessel’s office of having “orchestrated a coordinated plan to gain access to voting tabulators.”
After the 2020 presidential election, according to a statement from Hilson’s office, clerks in three Michigan counties were “deceived” into turning over voting machines to “unauthorized third parties,” who took them to hotel rooms or Airbnbs. “The clerks had no idea of the scope, nature or duration of how their tabulators were going to be manipulated or that they would be out of their possession for an extended period of time,” he said.
Computer experts asked to examine the tabulators “were also deceived by some of the charged Defendants,” and broke into the machines under the false impression that the “tampering… was lawful.”
In December 2020, Lambert filed a conspiracy-stuffed lawsuit on behalf of Sheriff Leaf and several other plaintiffs alleging “massive election fraud.” The suit, which failed to provide any evidence, invited the court to “speculative leaps toward a hazy and nebulous inference,” a judge said at the time.
Lambert’s own attorney characterized her as “a zealous advocate for her clients” in a statement texted to a MLive.com reporter ahead of Thursday’s arraignment. The lawyer, Michael J. Smith, insisted Lambert “did not violate the law,” adding that she “intends to sue Hilson for malicious prosecution.”
