Michigan’s attorney general filed forgery and other felony charges Tuesday against 16 Republican activists who signed papers after the 2020 election falsely indicating they were the duly appointed presidential electors for the state.

The case filed by Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, represents the first criminal charges related to efforts by allies of former President Donald Trump to designate alternate slates of electors. The scheme would ultimately become the basis for Trump’s last-ditch bid to remain in power, an effort to create a contest or crisis when Congress met to tally up the Electoral College votes and certify Joe Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump used the existence of those “competing” slates of electors to pressure his vice president, Mike Pence, to block Biden’s election.

Some would-be electors and their allies have said the alternate slates were part of a contingency plan intended to buttress other legal moves by Trump to challenge the 2020 election results. However, those legal challenges famously fizzled in court, leaving those who signed the documents and others who organized the efforts facing investigation and potential legal jeopardy.

In a statement Thursday, Nessel dismissed the notion that the self-styled electors were part of a legitimate legal challenge to the 2020 election.

“This plan — to reject the will of the voters and undermine democracy — was fraudulent and legally baseless,” Nessel declared.

“The evidence will demonstrate there was no legal authority for the false electors to purport to act as ‘duly elected presidential electors’ and execute the false electoral documents,” the attorney general added. “Every serious challenge to the election had been denied, dismissed, or otherwise rejected by the time the false electors convened. There was no legitimate legal avenue or plausible use of such a document or an alternative slate of electors.”

The news comes as Trump has revealed he’s been informed he’s a target of special counsel Jack Smith’s sprawling investigation into his effort to subvert the 2020 election — a multipart scheme that included assembling false slates of electors in seven states won by Joe Biden. Smith has not indicated what charges he’s considering for Trump or any of his allies, but he has eyed aspects of the false elector scheme.