GRAND RAPIDS, MI – A progressive advocacy group said Attorney General Bill Schuette should step aside and appoint an independent investigator to look at possible crimes committed by House Speaker Jase Bolger and Rep. Roy Schmidt in an election rigging plot.

Progress Michigan Executive Director Zack Pohl said state police records reveal that Schuette, a Republican, has an interest in the outcome.

Schuette, the day after Schmidt switched parties at the candidate filing deadline on May 15, texted the newly minted Republican and asked him to call him to chat. The attorney general’s office has acknowledged the men talked, but rejected any insinuation of misdeeds.

Schuette has declined requests of his office to intervene in the investigation after Kent County Prosecutor Bill Forsyth determined the lawmakers had acted shamefully, but not illegally, in trying to fix the Aug. 7 primary and Nov. 6 general elections.

“It’s clear that Attorney General Schuette has been hiding his involvement in Speaker Bolger’s failed election fraud scheme for months,” Pohl said Monday. “As Michigan’s top law enforcement official, he should immediately recuse himself and appoint an independent investigator to look into this case.

“Attorney General Schuette should come clean on his involvement in trying to protect Roy Schmidt and Speaker Bolger as they were trying to defraud voters by fixing the election.”

Related: Roy Schmidt investigation short-circuited without all evidence in hand, Democrats claim

Democrats claimed Monday that Forsyth short-circuited his investigation by telling a state police detective that no more inquiry was needed even as there was a pending search warrant for Bolger's cell phone records.

Forsyth said he owed it to voters to issue a decision to give them the opportunity to weigh the shenanigans at the ballot box.

He said the fact that Bolger and Schmidt were acting on a lawyer’s advice while recruiting a fake Democrat made it nearly impossible to prosecute them.

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