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       Kathy Berden, Hank Choate, Amy Facchinello, Clifford Frost, Stanley Grot, John Haggard, Mari-Ann Henry, Timothy King, Michele Lundgren, Meshawn Maddock, Mayra Rodriguez, Rose Rook, Marian Sheridan, Ken Thompson and Kent Vanderwood are under indictment in Michigan, each facing criminal counts centered on forgery.

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       In Nevada, James DeGraffenreid, Durward Hindle, Jesse Law, Michael McDonald, Shawn Meehan and Eileen Rice face similar charges, as well. Cathy Latham, David Shafer and Shawn Still were indicted by a grand jury in Fulton County, Ga., on charges of forgery and impersonating a public officer.

       In Wisconsin, Carol Brunner, Mary Buestrin, Darryl Carlson, Bill Feehan, Edward Grabins, Andrew Hitt, Kathy Kiernen, Kelly Ruh, Robert Spindell Jr. and Pam Travis avoided criminal charges but settled a civil case brought against them. Luckily for them, that settlement excluded the $200,000-per-person penalty that had originally been sought.

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       In total, that’s 34 people who are either awaiting trial or were part of the Wisconsin settlement. They may be joined by 11 others from Arizona, where a similarly focused investigation is underway.

       Their shared (alleged) misconduct? Serving as fake electors in support of Donald Trump’s effort to retain power after 2020.

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       These nearly three dozen individuals are not the only people who exposed themselves to potential sanctions for actions they took in support of Trump. There are also those 1,200-plus people charged with or who pleaded guilty to having participated in the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The nature of the alleged criminal conduct is obviously different. But the motivation is similar: being convinced by Trump and/or Trump’s allies that they had a role to play in helping Trump overcome his election loss.

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       For years, Trump and his team have insisted that their actions were a function of legal advice they’d been given, that the president believed the election was stolen (despite the lack of evidence to that effect) and that his lawyers told him there were legitimate ways in which he could counteract that theft. The fake-electors scheme was perhaps the most explicit, getting individuals to submit their names to the National Archives in the same manner as their states’ legitimate, Joe Biden electors, just in case there was a way to swap their votes in for the real ones.

       But there were important differences in how those illegitimate votes were presented. In Georgia, the submitted votes were presented as those of “the duly elected and qualified Electors” of the state. In Pennsylvania, they were offered just in case “we are ultimately recognized as being the duly elected and qualified Electors.” The former statement is untrue; all but one of the signatories to it now face criminal charges. (The exception reached a deal with prosecutors.) The latter statement is moderated and no charges have been filed.

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       On Tuesday afternoon, the Detroit News published text messages demonstrating how that difference was effected. Sent between Kenneth Chesebro — a Trump attorney who agreed to cooperate with the Fulton County probe — and Mike Roman, a Trump campaign staffer, the discussion centers on the language used in the Pennsylvania document.

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       “Mike, I think the language at start of the certificate should be changed in all the states,” Chesebro writes. “Let’s look at the language carefully.”

       “[I] don’t,” Roman replied, curtly.

       “I can help with drafting in a couple [of] hours,” Chesebro wrote.

       Roman responded with an expletive: “f--- these guys.”

       Chesebro replied, “Just placate [Pennsylvania]? OK.”

       That exchange occurred on Dec. 12, 2020, two days before the fake electors met to sign their names to the documents provided by the Trump team. This was an explicit conflict between the legal side, Chesebro, and the political side, Roman — and the political side won out. The language was not moderated and the Trump “electors” in other states have subsequently faced sanction.

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       This specific language wasn’t the only problem, certainly. In Michigan, for example, the submitted documents asserted that the electors had met in the state capitol, which was untrue. But that this tension between a lawyer and a political actor existed and was resolved in favor of the political side seems like an apt distillation of Trump’s post-2020 response in general.

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       About a week after the text exchange, Chesebro attended an event at the White House, where he had an audience with Trump. CNN reports that he and another attorney were asked not to give Trump false hope about his chances of retaining his position. During the meeting, though, Chesebro suggested to Trump that the existence of alternate electors in Arizona kept open the possibility of challenging the results. In an interview with investigators in Michigan, Chesebro reportedly admitted that this perhaps made “clear (to Trump) in a way that maybe it hadn’t been before, that we had until January 6 to win.”

       That the fake slates of electors were empaneled in the first place demonstrates the triumph of Trump’s political desires over legal constraints; there was no viable contest over the results in the states where they were submitted. In his testimony to those investigators, Chesebro drew a line from that political triumph to the disaster that unfolded at the Capitol three weeks later.

       Hundreds of people were convinced to commit acts that exposed them to criminal charges because Trump and his allies prioritized his power over questions of the law. Perhaps nowhere was that prioritization more explicit than in the exchange between Chesebro and Roman.

       More on the Trump Jan. 6 indictment The charges: Former president Donald Trump pleaded not guilty to charges that he plotted to overturn the 2020 election in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Here’s a breakdown of the charges against Trump and what they mean, and things that stand out from the Trump indictment. Read the full text of the 45-page indictment.

       The trial: Jury selection in the D.C. criminal trial is set to begin Feb. 9, with the trial set to begin March 4. U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan has imposed a gag order on Trump’s public statements in advance of the trial.

       The case: The special counsel’s office has been investigating whether Trump or those close to him violated the law by interfering with the lawful transfer of power after the 2020 presidential election or with Congress’s confirmation of the results on Jan. 6, 2021. It is one of several ongoing investigations involving Trump.

       Can Trump still run for president? While it has never been attempted by a candidate from a major party before, Trump is allowed to run for president while under indictment in four separate cases — or even if he is convicted of a crime. Here’s how Trump’s indictment could affect the 2024 election.

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