Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said protesters demanding the overturning of the state’s presidential election results threatened her family with violence on Sunday.
In a statement detailing the ordeal, Benson said that “dozens of armed individuals stood outside” her home “shouting obscenities and chanting into bullhorns” their demand for her to use her powers as secretary of state to overturn the will of the electorate, which voted in the majority for Joe Biden over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
The protests began just after Benson and her 4-year-old son had finished decorating the house for Christmas and were about to watch a movie together, she added.
Benson decried their actions, noting that she is also a staunch defender of the right of free speech.
“I have always been an energetic advocate for the right and importance of peaceful protests as enshrined in the United States Constitution,” Benson said. “However, there is a line crossed when gatherings are done with the primary purpose of intimidation of public officials who are carrying out the oath of office they solemnly took as elected officials.”
The state official described protesters outside of her home as an “extension of the noise and clouded efforts to spread false information about the security and accuracy of our elections.”
She announced she would not give in to the demands by those who want to see the election results ignored. “I have spent my career defending and protecting the right to vote of every eligible citizen. That commitment has never wavered, and it will not waver now.”
For the past several weeks, President Donald Trump has refused to concede to President-elect Joe Biden, alleging without providing proof that fraudulent ballots or other voting irregularities resulted in his loss.
Because of his continued efforts to contest the election results, some election officials have worried about the possibility that some of Trump’s supporters could respond violently.
“Someone is going to get hurt. Someone is going to get shot. Someone’s going to get killed. And it’s not right. It’s not right,” Gabriel Sterling, the voting system implementation manager for the state of Georgia, warned last week.
Extremist elements of Trump’s base have planned violent actions against state officials in Michigan, likely due to the president’s words and encouragement. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-Michigan) was threatened with a kidnapping plot earlier this year, with militia members surveilling Whitmer’s summer home in preparations for abducting her, and planning to use explosives in their eventual scheme.
The plot started to materialize in the spring of this year, around the same time Trump had tweeted for citizens of the state to “LIBERATE MICHIGAN” in response to rules and regulations implemented to quell the spread of coronavirus.
Although Trump has contested the results of the election ever since it was called in Biden’s favor in early November, there is no proof or evidence to back up his claims of widespread fraud. Out of around 50 court cases in state and federal courthouses across the country brought forward by Trump’s lawyers or by allies of the president, more than 30 of them have been tossed out or dropped due to their lack of merit, with about a dozen more remaining to be decided yet.
In a recent court case, U.S. District Judge Linda V. Parker ruled against a suit brought forward by Sidney Powell, a Trump-aligned lawyer that had requested the election results be tossed out and the state award its Electoral College votes to the incumbent president.
Parker soundly rejected the request.
“Plaintiffs ask this Court to ignore the orderly statutory scheme established to challenge elections and to ignore the will of millions of voters,” Parker said in her ruling. “This the Court cannot, and will not, do. The people have spoken.”
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy