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Paige Oamek
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August 23, 2024/12:53 p.m. ET
Trump’s Cop-Backed Rant Against Kamala Harris May Have Broken Law
Turns out, it’s a crime in Michigan to use public resources to support a candidate.
Trump at the Livingston County Sheriff's Office
During a campaign event with Michigan law enforcement earlier this week, Donald Trump didn’t just refuse to take questions. He may have enabled a crime.
At the event on Tuesday at the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office in the city of Howell, Trump dodged reporters, told lies about rising crime rates, and fearmongered about a “Kamala crime wave” occurring at levels “nobody has ever seen before.” Livingston officers stood behind him, alongside sheriff’s vehicles and a banner reading, “Michigan is Trump Country.”
As the Detroit Metro Times notes, it is against state law to use public resources to support a candidate for office. The Michigan Bureau of Elections is now reviewing two complaints that allege the sheriff’s office violated the law. In a video posted days before the event, Sheriff Michael Murphy offered this preemptive defense: “Let me make a couple of things clear: One, this is not a political event. This is a press conference.”
But Trump only took one question before leaving the event. Trump “can call it a press conference, but he was clearly advocating for his election as president. That was a campaign event, and what the Livingston County Sheriff’s Department did was illegal,” lawyer Mark Brewer, a former Michigan Democratic Party chair, told the Michigan Advance. “They held it in a public building, which was obviously cleaned up for Trump, and then they staged the vehicles behind him. And then you have uniformed officers there, as well. Those are all public resources.”
The Michigan Campaign Finance Act states that such a crime is punishable by up to 93 days in jail.
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