Lawyer who spread Trump’s 2020 election lies enters race for Michigan Supreme Court

A Michigan lawyer was indicted last year for illegally gaining access to voting machines in the state while former President Donald Trump was contesting the 2020 results. Now the lawyer is running for a seat on the state’s highest court.

Constitutional lawyer Matthew DePerno, a proponent of the “big lie” that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump, announced last week on the social media platform X that he is running for one of the two seats on the Michigan Supreme Court that will be up for grabs in the fall.

The Michigan Supreme Court is the “court of last resort” for the state of Michigan. It is the final authority in the state’s judicial system and is often entrusted with deciding cases involving voting rights and elections, criminal law, and the state and U.S. Constitution.

The seven-member court has a 4-3 Democratic majority. Liberal Judge Kyra Harris Bolden, appointed by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to fill a vacancy in 2022, is running for her seat while conservative Judge David Viviano is resigning.

For the Supreme Court, political parties will hold nominating conventions to select candidates, which is expected to happen this summer. Candidates in the general election will run without party affiliation, as the race is intended to be non-partisan.

“I will put a bipartisan campaign in the national spotlight,” DePerno wrote on X in response to another user. The lawyer previously ran for Michigan attorney general and was endorsed by Trump over another GOP candidate seeking to unseat Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel. Nessel won the 2022 race against DePerno.

After his loss in the election for attorney general, DePerno announced he would run for chairman of the Michigan Republican Party. However, he lost to fellow supporter and election denier Kristina Karamo in 2023. Karamo was recently pushed out of office by party members.

DePerno is the latest Trump supporter to run for office after helping Trump and his allies overturn the 2020 election results to keep the former president in office. Last year, he was charged with improper possession of a voting machine and other offenses as part of a special prosecutor-led investigation into voting machine tampering in the state.

DePerno’s attorney told NPR his client believes the charges are politically motivated. Nessell has recused himself from the investigation due to the conflict of interest.

In December 2020, as the Trump campaign sought to stop or obstruct the certification of Biden’s election victory in several states, the court rejected an attempt to halt the certification of the results in Michigan so that an investigation into unproven allegations of voter fraud could take place. Judge Viviano dissented.

In December last year, the court upheld a lower court’s decision to keep Trump on the ballot and declined to consider whether Trump was allegedly ineligible under the Insurrection Clause of the 14th Amendment.