Five years after Jan. 6, many implicated Michiganders remain in power, showing lack of consequences

(Michigan Advance) Five years after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the culmination of weeks of effort by President Donald Trump to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, many of the Michiganders who were allegedly involved in those attempts are still in power — within the Republican Party, on campaigns and in elected office.

It shows, two law professors explained, that the nation has worked hard to move on quickly from the events of that day — perhaps too fast.

“This is true in Michigan and around the country, that the people who were involved really at any level of the effort to steal the election,” said Quinn Yeargain, a professor of the law of democracy at Michigan State University, “every single person, for the most part, with some notable exceptions like Rudy Giuliani, have largely managed to evade consequence for their actions, and have just resumed doing what they were doing before, or have come into greater positions of power.”

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Michigan’s alleged “false electors,” who attempted to cast the state’s slate of electoral votes in 2020 for Trump, had their charges dismissed in September by Lansing 54-A District Court Judge Kristen Simmons, who said that there was not sufficient evidence to prove that those who allegedly signed the documents had criminal intent. That decision came after one of the alleged electors, James Renner, testified in court following a cooperation agreement that led to charges against him being dropped.

All 16 of the alleged false electors were also pardoned in November by Trump in sweeping pardons of over 70 individuals nationwide — though those federal pardons would not apply to the state-level charges that they had faced, which Attorney General Dana Nessel has indicated her office is reviewing. ....................(more)

https://michiganadvance.com/2026/01/06/five-years-after-jan-6-many-implicated-michiganders-remain-in-power-showing-lack-of-consequences/