A pro-Trump lawyer in Michigan who was involved in litigation after the 2020 presidential election challenging its outcome and then faced charges for an alleged role in an election machine scheme was given 24 hours to turn herself in to authorities this week after a judge issued a bench warrant.
Defendant Stefanie Lambert ultimately didn’t show up for the hearing where the judge then issued that warrant. The hearing was meant to focus on questions about Lambert’s previous compliance with procedural demands in her case for the lawyer to be fingerprinted. Michigan Judge Jeffery S. Matis suggested that problems traced to Lambert herself rather than her legal team, as relayed by the Michigan news publication Michigan Advance.
“What I want to emphasize here is I have no doubt that defense counsel has been honest with us, but I don’t think she’s been honest with them. And everything that’s been communicated to us I now question,” Matis said. A lawyer for Lambert unsuccessfully argued before Matis issued that warrant that his client was unclear on the details of the latest proceedings amid prosecutors’ push to secure her compliance with the demands for fingerprinting.
The alleged scheme in which Lambert was implicated involved the unauthorized possession of equipment from the 2020 elections, which mirrored attempts elsewhere in the country to access such equipment amid hopes of finding some evidence to support pro-Trump claims of extensive fraud in that year’s presidential race. Whether in Michigan, Colorado, Georgia, or elsewhere, no such evidence was ever uncovered, though Trump — now the front-runner for Republicans’ presidential nomination this year — still propagates the conspiracy theories.
Notably, charged alongside Lambert following the alleged scheme in Michigan is Matthew DePerno, who was Republicans’ pick for Michigan Attorney General in the midterm elections held in 2022. The Trump-aligned candidate was unsuccessful against incumbent Dana Nessel, a Democrat still serving. Republicans lost massively in elections across Michigan that year, with the GOP pick for governor losing by more than 10 percent.
