Felony Charges Dropped: Virginia Election Official Accused of Altering Election Results in 2020 Election to Stand Trial in January on Single Misdemeanor

The former general registrar of Prince William County, Virginia, Michele White, was arrested in September 2022 on two felonies and a misdemeanor relating to the 2020 election:  election officer neglect duty (24.2-10001), Election officer corrupt conduct (24.2-1001) and False statement on required form (24.2-1016).

In a “surprising twist”, however, both felony counts were dropped, leaving only the misdemeanor count of “neglect of duty by an election officer.”

On Friday, Assistant Attorney General James Herring filed the request for dismissal of the felony counts after a key witness, Sean Mulligan, changed his testimony.

PrinceWilliamTimes.com reports:

“In preparation for the scheduled jury trial, the Commonwealth interviewed Sean Mulligan, a key witness for the prosecution who had been previously interviewed by investigators of the Office of the Attorney General,” Herring wrote in the court motion. “During the interview … Mulligan conveniently and quite surprisingly provided a different version of events from that which he had previously provided to investigators.”

“Confronted with significant inconsistent statements made by a key Commonwealth’s witness,” prosecutors are “no longer able to proceed to trial on the two felony charges,” Herring wrote in the motion.

There are no further details provided in court records about what Mulligan was expected to testify to, though Mulligan was employed at the county office of elections during the 2020 election. Judge Carroll Weimer Jr. approved the motion to drop the charges.

Just the News recently obtained documents related to the case alleging that the former registrar “altered election results” during the 2020 election.  The filing claimed that “one Commonwealth allegation is that Ms. White altered the election results within the state reporting system, VERIS, and that her alterations resulted in the false reporting of the election results in Prince William County.”  The election records from 2020, according to the filing, are still held under seal by the Clerk of the Circuit Court for the county and have been requested to be released by the defense in the case.

The current registrar, Eric Olsen, was a witness for the Commonwealth after he discovered “anomalies” in the 2020 election paperwork.  As part of the prosecution, he had been asked to perform an “audit of the election records for the purpose of performing a hand count.”  Olsen estimated the audit would cost $103,000, or $0.45 per ballot.  Initially, the defense had motioned that the Court cover the costs, but that motion was denied.

Also in question were three cell phones that the defense sought to access “in order to extract meta data from pictures that are material evidence in the Commonwealth’s prosecution of Ms. White.”  An estimated $11,000 was also requested, and the defense was denied permission to copy and analyze that data.

The affidavit for subpoena references a “Mr. Short” (who is not party to this action) and states that he “has the following in his possession or under his control; electronic communications that were sent from or directed to the Defendant.”

According to the filing, three emails were also set to be introduced by the Commonwealth as evidence against Ms. White.  Those emails are titled “call me please,” “RE CAP MASTER” and “EAC_Data_Summit_Philly,” although there is no reference to the contents of the emails.

It is unclear if the above-mentioned evidence will be used in the pursuance of a misdemeanor conviction.

The Gateway Pundit previously reported on discrepancies in the 2022 election in Prince William County regarding mismatches between the number of physical paper ballots cast versus what was reported by the machine scanner’s tally of ballots.

The discrepancy resulted in a hand count, which was not able to reconcile any of the differences, but was able to determine that it was, of course, “not likely coming from machine malfunctions.”

Ms. White was not the registrar at the time in Prince William County, which houses the CIA’s Headquarters at Quantico within its borders.

The post Felony Charges Dropped: Virginia Election Official Accused of Altering Election Results in 2020 Election to Stand Trial in January on Single Misdemeanor appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.