LANSING – Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel filed charges Thursday against three people accused of submitting thousands of forged nominating signatures that ended the candidacies of five Republican gubernatorial candidates last year.
Willie Reed, 37; Shawn Wilmoth, 36 and Jamie Lynn Wilmoth-Goodin, 36, were each charged with more than two dozen crimes, including conducting a criminal enterprise, forgery and false pretenses.
They face up to 20 years in prison.
At a news conference, Nessel said the Wilmoths, who are married, and Reed were “the worst actors”, but additional signature collectors could be charged.
“The investigating is ongoing,” Nessel said.
The scandal disqualified five gubernatorial candidates
Nessel said the three defendants “absolutely knew that they were submitting forgeries to these campaigns.”
“What we are alleging is they made no effort to warn the campaigns or eliminate the signatures they knew to be fraudulent before they passed them along to the campaigns,” Nessel said.
Wilmoth and Reed were also charged with theft from the campaign of Republican gubernatorial candidate Ryan Kelley, who did make the August 2022 primary ballot, but lost to Tudor Dixon. Dixon went on to be defeated in the November general election by Gov. Whitmer.
GOP gubernatorial candidates the Bureau of Elections recommended to remove from the ballot (clockwise): James Craig, Michael Brown, Donna Brandenburg, Perry Johnson and Michael Markey
Wilmoth and Wilmoth-Goodin, who reside in Michigan, were apprehended by the Warren Police Department and were arraigned on Thursday. United States marshals are currently working to locate Reed, who will be extradited to Michigan when he is apprehended.
Shawn Wilmoth was charged as a habitual offender because he was convicted of election fraud in Virginia in 2011.
This expansive fraud also stole something from the voters of Michigan. When seven of these candidates were disqualified from the ballot, fully half the Republican field for governor was deemed ineligible for voters to consider – Dana Nessel
As a result of the signature forgery ring, five of the 10 Republican gubernatorial candidates — former Detroit Police Chief James Craig, businessman Perry Johnson, financial adviser Michael Jay Markey, Michigan State Police Capt. Michael Brown and entrepreneur Donna Brandenburg — were kicked off the ballot because they had failed to collect enough valid petitions.
Tens of thousands of the signatures were forgeries, according to the Michigan Bureau of Elections.
The alleged forgeries were quickly detected by the Michigan Bureau of Elections, within the Department of State, which determined the campaigns of Johnson, Craig, Brandenburg, Brown, Markey and judicial candidates Tricia Dare, John Cahalan and John Michael Malone had not met the qualifications to appear on the 2022 primary ballot. The Department of State then referred the matter to the Department of Attorney General for investigation in June of 2022.
“This expansive fraud also stole something from the voters of Michigan,” Nessel said. “When seven of these candidates were disqualified from the ballot, fully half the Republican field for governor was deemed ineligible for voters to consider. Our democracy suffers when the voters are denied the opportunity to evaluate candidates they may have wished to support on election day.”
In its investigation, the Department of Attorney General identified more than $700,000 in payments from nine campaigns for signature collection and verification. It alleges the three defendants knowingly and intentionally deceived their clients, took their money and provided them with fabricated petition signatures.
“The evidence very clearly demonstrates that defendants Wilmoth, Wilmoth-Goodin, and Reed were all aware of and directly responsible for the forged work-product provided to the campaigns which they knew would ultimately be filed with the Michigan Department of State Bureau of elections,” Nessel said.
Nessel said the signatures delivered to the nine impacted campaigns were “obvious forgeries.”
“The methods used to disguise their con were sophomoric and transparent,” Nessel said. “Still, we can take comfort and have faith in the security and integrity of our elections knowing that the Bureau of Elections so quickly and easily detected the fraud.”
While many of these charges are financial crimes, Nessel said these are also crimes against democracy, the integrity of our elections and against voters who wanted to support the disqualified candidates.
In a statement, Brown applauded Nessel’s office.
“The coming months will shed light on the alleged actions of this group that cause significant disruption of the electoral process in 2022,” Brown said.
The circulators were used almost exclusively by conservative candidates. Democrats had been suspicious of the circulators for years and scoured the signatures last year for signs of fraud.
The scope of the forgeries shocked them.
“I have never seen such evidence of forgery and fraud in a petition drive in the nearly 40 years I have been practicing election law in Michigan,” attorney Mark Brewer, who filed the challenge against Craig’s signatures, said at the time.
In total, six gubernatorial candidates and two judicial candidates paid companies associated with the Wilmoths and Reed more than $700,000 to collect the signatures.
Nessel shared an example of the fraudulent signatures discovered by the State Bureau of Elections through handwriting samples.
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