As her case against Michigan Republicans unravels, Attorney General Dana Nessel is leveraging her lesbian sexuality to court voters for President Joe Biden.
On Wednesday, Nessel teamed with the Michigan chapter of the Human Rights Campaign and several Democratic state lawmakers to “discuss what’s at stake in November” at a press conference where they declared they’re “out for Biden,” Michigan Democrats posted to X. The post includes each of the leaders’ preferred pronouns.
Today, Democrats and LGBTQ+ leaders came together to discuss what's at stake in November. Left to right, @dakota_torolski (he/him), @EmilyDievendorf (they/them), @lpohustky19 (she/her), @dananessel (she/her), @JasonMorganMI (he/him), @JasonMHoskins (he/him) 🧵
#Pride #Pride2024 pic.twitter.com/FvgKJL3ADb— Michigan Democrats (@MichiganDems) June 5, 2024
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“We’re #OutForBiden and committed to electing pro-equality candidates up and down the ballot!” Nessel wrote in a post to X.
I joined @MichiganDems and @HRC_MI today along with Reps @JasonMorganMI, @JasonMHoskins, @lpohutsky19 and @EmilyDievendorf to discuss the stakes in 2024.
We’re #OutForBiden and committed to electing pro-equality candidates up and down the ballot!https://t.co/z3iPMg1bZq
— Dana Nessel (@dananessel) June 6, 2024
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“The only actual way to save LGBTQ+ people from being launched backwards literally 50 years if not further is to re-elect Joe Biden, a man who has been our greatest ally, a champion, and a protector of the LGBTQ community,” Nessel said at the event. “Our rights are on the chopping block and we cannot afford to let Joe Biden lose this election.”
Michigan’s 54th Attorney General prides herself in being the first openly gay person elected to statewide office in Michigan, and has built her career on LGBTQ legal advocacy. She’s married to Alanna Maguire, whom she met fighting against Michigan’s same-sex marriage ban, and has two kids.
At Wednesday’s press conference, Nessel offered a greatest hits of perceived slights against the LGBTQ community during former President Donald Trump’s tenure, suggesting “if Donald Trump is back in office there will be a whole lot more of them.”
It was a similar message when the attorney general campaigned on Biden’s behalf for “a small group of supporters” at a Lansing coffee house last month, when she met with women from Louisiana and Texas to discuss concerns about abortion restrictions.
Seated in front of a “Stop Trump” sign, Nessel told the media “I don’t know what’s more government overreach than the government deciding they should have a say in your ovulation cycle.
“But that’s what we’re going to get with another Trump administration,” she said.
Nessel alleged “really, anything goes when it comes to persecuting women for having the audacity … to reproduce” because the former president has “no interest in protecting women,” Bridge Michigan reports.
Nessel’s disdain for Trump, however, isn’t limited to the campaign trail. It’s leaked out in prosecutions she’s launched against at least 20 Republicans ahead of the November election.
Last year, when Nessel announced felony charges against 16 high-level Michigan Republicans who backed Trump in 2020, she alleged her office had “overwhelming evidence of an organized effort to circumvent the lawfully cast ballots of millions of Michigan voters in a presidential election.”
Through a dozen days of preliminary examinations in Ingham County District Court, Nessel’s top investigator, Howard Shock, has yet to produce that evidence.
“Where’s the evidence of any intent that anybody had to commit to crime?” defense lawyer John Freeman asked this week.
“It’s all wishful thinking,” he said. “It’s a politically motivated which hunt that has no basis in the evidence.”
Even the judge in the case, Kristen Simmons, has highlighted “glaring” concerns with the prosecution.
“I can understand why the questions are now steering to how this investigation went about because if you’re not presenting your investigation well, we now need to understand what happened during the investigation,” Simmons said.
Simmons has also taken issue with Nessel’s comments to The Detroit News during the case, in which the attorney general expressed frustration “that it’s taking so long for any of these cases involving the 2020 election to get to a point where we’re actually seeing criminal trials.”
“How long does she think that’s going to take?” Simmons questioned. “They all have the right to bring their own counsel. They all have the right to cross examine. They all have the right to bring their own witnesses should they want to do that.”
Other Republicans Nessel has recently charged with crimes include Republican fundraising consultants Heather Lombardini and Sandy Baxter, who Nessel alleges failed to properly disclose money raised to oppose Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s unilateral edicts during the pandemic, which courts later ruled unconstitutional.
“Aside from being unethical, what makes these acts criminal is the intentional act of soliciting and receiving money explicitly through one organization with the expressed intention to support a cause that requires public disclosure of donors,” Nessel said when she announced the felony charges in February.
That case followed just two months after Nessel targeted Robert and Anne Minard, two high-ranking aides to former Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield, for alleged embezzlement.
Much like her comments on the Trump electors, Nessel alleged the Minards are “hired guns” for Republicans who “knowingly, willfully and overtly violated the law.”
And she may not be done yet.
“The Michigan Department of Attorney General has not ruled out potential charges against additional defendants” in the case, according to a December press release.