Rendon is alleged to have misrepresented the Legislature while she coerced clerks to comply with illegal election equipment testing
LANSING, Mich., Aug. 30, 2022 — Today, House Democrats shared publicly a letter to Speaker of the House Jason Wentworth (R-Farwell) urging him to authorize an investigation of state Rep. Daire Rendon (R-Lake City). Rendon is alleged, by the Attorney General’s office, to have leveraged her elected position to coerce clerks in her district to give sensitive and vital election equipment to other conspirators for an illegal investigation of voting equipment they were not authorized to access. In one of these conversations, via phone call to the Roscommon County Clerk, it is alleged that Rendon told her “‘representatives’ were doing an investigation into election fraud and needed her voting machine,” when the Legislature had no business with the illegal operation to obtain the machines.
“This is an abuse of the honor of the Legislature we will not allow to stand, and we are urging Speaker Wentworth to authorize an investigation into how far Rep. Rendon went in her efforts to misrepresent this criminal operation as legitimate business of the Michigan House of Representatives,” said House Democratic Leader Donna Lasinski (D-Scio Township). “What actions did Rep. Rendon take to misrepresent that this activity was on behalf of the House of Representatives? The allegations against her constitute a serious misuse of her elected office in the facilitation of a crime. The people deserve to know if their government, other elected officials, or State of Michigan resources were used in this criminal conspiracy.”
At the beginning of August, after the Attorney General called for a special prosecutor to investigate allegations of illegal access of voting machines, Wentworth’s office announced that Rendon would be allowed to keep her committee assignments, including as chair of the House Insurance Committee. Through a spokesman, the speaker said he would “let the legal process play out.”
“We need an investigation now, no matter how much the Republican majority doesn’t want to draw attention to these alleged crimes,” said state Rep. Brenda Carter (D-Pontiac). “The people deserve to know to what degree and how their government was implicated in this conspiracy, and whether Rep. Rendon’s efforts to illegitimately portray this scheme as proper House of Representatives business implicated state of Michigan resources. To get these answers we must investigate her use of state phone lines, email addresses, public employees and more.”
A copy of the letter sent to Speaker Wentworth can be found here.