Joe.My.God. LGBT News
The Grand Haven Tribune reports:
It took less than an hour Wednesday for a jury to convict political activist Brandon Michael Hall on 10 counts of election law fraud, following a day-and-a-half trial in Ottawa County Circuit Court. The 27-year-old Grand Haven resident, author of the West Michigan Politics blog and self-admitted political junkie, said the verdict wasn’t a surprise. Hall said that he had resigned himself to that possibility after the Michigan Supreme Court, during this past summer, determined his case should be tried as a felony.
Hall showed only a little emotion and quickly composed himself as the jury foreman announced the verdict. Hall was charged with election law fraud after forging signatures on petitions in a 2012 effort to get judicial candidate Chris Houghtaling on the ballot.
Hall and Houghtaling crossed paths when they were both members of the Grand Haven school board. Hall resigned from the board in 2010 after being convicted of stealing from a school fundraiser — a misdemeanor.
For a 2013 story, Houghtaling was asked why he chose to work with Hall again. Houghtaling, an attorney, said that Hall approached him and offered to help with his judicial campaign as a chance to redeem himself and show that he could be trusted. Houghtaling said that was a mistake.
Hall has stayed busy the past few years working on various political campaigns across the country and most recently ran for the state House 89th District seat, but he was defeated in the Republican primary in August. He also worked on President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign.
“Donald Trump has made claim after claim calling the integrity of the election into question, but his Michigan campaign had no problem hiring a staff member facing election law charges,” Lonnie Scott, executive director of Progress Michigan, said following Hall’s conviction on Wednesday. “The fact that the Trump campaign and the Michigan Republican Party embraced Brandon Hall is just one more reason to recount and audit the vote in Michigan.”
Hall faces five years in prison.
Brandon Hall of the Michigan Trump campaign was just convicted of 10 of 10 counts of election fraud. https://t.co/KUJV4qNAiv
— Susan J. Demas (@sjdemas) November 30, 2016
Hall runs the West MI Politics blog and ran for state House this year as a Republican. Case goes back to 2012.
— Susan J. Demas (@sjdemas) November 30, 2016