Michigan law makes it a crime to use public resources to support a political candidate, but that didn’t stop two brazen local police departments from hosting nationally televised events for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign over the past two weeks.
The latest event was Tuesday at the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office in Howell, where Trump spoke in front of two banners each that read “Make America Safe Again” and “Michigan is Trump Country.” Trump spoke from a podium emblazoned with the Trump 2024 campaign logo. Behind him were three shiny sheriff’s SUVs.
With two-and-a-half months before the presidential election, Trump peddled lies about a fictitious spike in crimes and portrayed big cities “almost all run by Democrats” as lawless.
“You can’t walk across the street to get a loaf of bread,” Trump said. “You get shot. You get mugged. You get raped. You get whatever it may be.”
He dubbed this imagined increase in lawlessness as the “Kamala crime wave.”
Trump delivered his fear-mongering fabrications from Howell, a small town where masked white supremacists rallied last month, chanting “We love Hitler. We love Trump.” The rally was part of a Trump tour of cities with links to the KKK.
Are law enforcement officials breaking the laws that they took an oath to uphold? Well, without a hint of irony in his tone, Sheriff Michael Murphy claimed in a video Monday that this was not a political event.
“Let me make a couple of things clear: One, this is not a political event. This is a press conference,” Murphy said.
Oh, really? Trump speaking with political banners in the height of the political campaign season is not a… political event?
The Michigan Campaign Finance Act makes it a crime punishable by up to 93 days in jail to use any public resources to support a political candidate.
Mark Brewer, an attorney and former chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party, said the event violated election laws.
“It looks like the Trump campaign and the Livingston County Sheriff’s Department are trying to set the record for the most campaign finance and election law violations at one event,” Brewer tweeted Tuesday.
It looks like the Trump campaign and the Livingston County Sheriff’s Department are trying to set the record for the most campaign finance and election law violations at one event https://t.co/Fp00MqjzPD
— Mark Brewer (@MarkBrewerDems) August 20, 2024
On Aug. 7, Trump’s running mate JD Vance made a campaign stop at the Shelby Township Police Department, where he blasted Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris as a “chameleon” whose words “can’t be trusted.
“She’s a fake," Vance said. “And the American people have to look at her record if we actually want to know how she stands on the issues because her words simply can't be trusted.”
By what stretch of the imagination is that not a political event?
The Michigan Department of State (DOS), which is tasked with enforcing campaign laws, has so far done nothing about this or even weighed in.
Asked whether the police departments violated the law, DOS spokeswoman Angela Benander tells Metro Times, “We can’t answer questions about whether a specific activity violates the Michigan Campaign Finance Act.”
But there is a way to get state officials to investigate.
“Anyone seeking a legal determination on that activity can file an official complaint through the Bureau of Elections or a request for Department of State to issue a declaratory ruling/interpretive statement,” Benander says.
Here’s how you do that: Fill out the complaint form on the Bureau of Elections website.
It’s more than a little ironic that the people claiming to be the most concerned about crime are the ones who appear to be breaking a state law.
