LANSING, Mich. — George Donnini, a lawyer for one of the 16 Republican electors who signed a certificate falsely claiming Donald Trump won Michigan's 2020 election, said in court Tuesday his client felt misled by the Trump campaign and tied the document to a campaign staffer.

Donnini's comments came at the end of a lengthy day of testimony in Ingham County District Court, where a judge is considering whether felony charges, including allegations of forgery, against six of the GOP electors should advance to trial.

While questioning Howard Shock, a special agent for Attorney General Dana Nessel's office, Donnini argued that Michael Roman, the Trump campaign's director of Election Day operations, was the reason the GOP certificate in Michigan asserted Trump had won Michigan's 16 electoral votes.

“Maybe you should charge Mike Roman and not a retired farmer,” Donnini told Shock, referring to his client Kathy Berden of Snover.

Shock acknowledged that Roman was considered an unindicted co-conspirator and that the investigation into the false certificate remained ongoing in Michigan.

Roman's lawyer, Ashleigh Merchant, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

The exchange between Donnini and Shock pointed to one of the mysteries surrounding Nessel's pursuit of the false electors in Michigan: Why have prosecutors charged the electors and not some of the higher-profile individuals who advised them to sign the certificate?

Donnini had been asking Shock about text messages from December 2020 between Roman and Kenneth Chesebro, a lawyer who was working with the Trump campaign on its efforts to submit alternate electoral certificates in multiple battleground states in the weeks after the Nov. 3, 2020, election.

The messages were first reported by The Detroit News in December.

Chesebro planned to write alternative language for the Pennsylvania and New Mexico electoral certificates, stipulating the Republicans in those states weren't the official electors but "might later be determined" to be the electors through a successful lawsuit.

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