Special prosecutor to investigate Michigan GOP candidate

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — A special prosecutor in Michigan has been appointed to investigate whether the Republican candidate for attorney general and others should be criminally charged for their attempts to gain access to voting machines after the 2020 election.

The office of Democratic attorney general Dana Nessel last month asked the Prosecuting Attorneys Coordinating Council, a state agency, to consider charges against nine people, including Republican Matthew DePerno, her opponent in the November election. Nessel's office cited a potential conflict of interest because of the upcoming election.

The executive director of the council on Thursday said D.J. Hilson, the prosecuting attorney in Muskegon County, would handle the case. Hilson, a Democrat, was first elected to office in 2012.

A phone call to DePerno's campaign manager seeking comment was not immediately returned. He has previously said the claims were “purely based on political prosecution.” The Kalamazoo attorney also said that “90% of the facts that (Nessel) lays out, that she calls facts in her petition, are either false or I have no knowledge of what she’s talking about.”

DePerno and the others named in the Michigan documents are among the people nationwide who are facing legal implications for embracing former President Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen. A Colorado county clerk this week pleaded not guilty to charges she allowed an unauthorized person to break into her county’s election system in search of proof of Trump’s conspiracy theories.

DePerno built his political reputation — and snagged an early endorsement from Trump — by pushing Trump's unsubstantiated election fraud claims. Trump lost the election in Michigan by some 154,000 votes, an outcome that has been upheld by...