By Robert Anthony
February 16th 2024
Getting involved with politics you come to learn about this concept of “Power Centers” and you quickly realize that there are those who will use practically any means necessary to retain said power. Stand Up Michigan has become one of these power-mongering groups in Michigan politics.
I am taking Kevin Skinner’s word for the conspiracy surrounding Ron Armstrong’s take over the Stand Up Michigan company (it is not a Non-Profit, but very much FOR Profit). I would reference Kevin Skinners public testimony about what Stand Up Michigan and Ron Armstrong did to force him out, clearly against his will. I have never heard a single testimony from neither Garrett Soldano nor Ron Armstrong making a case against Skinner, so as far as I am concerned Skinner must be telling the truth.
It must be said, my personal experience with Ron Armstrong was very much in line with the things Skinner had to say. Here is my story with Stand Up Michigan and Ron Armstrong: I was reaching out to Ron Armstrong since I was involved with Rep. Steve Carra drafting the bill to audit Michigan’s November 3rd 2020 election. I have not sat down to count every email, text and phone call I made to Mr. Armstrong because quite frankly it is almost embarrassing how persistent I was in trying to reach him. I would guess I tried to get a phone call or meeting with him more than 20 times before finally launching the petition to DeCertify Michigan’s Nov 3rd 2020 election but to no avail.
(Ron Armstrong)
I can not tell the story of Stand Up Michigan and Ron Armstrong without mentioning Pat Colbeck. The very first time I met Colbeck, at Lindell’s Cyber Symposium, he lied directly to my face saying, “Stand Up Michigan was working on a petition to Audit the Nov 3rd 2020 Election”. Understand how strange this was, Colbeck knew I was at the Cyber symposium with Rep. Steve Carra who was actively drafting a bill to audit Michigan’s election!? Colbeck wasn’t promoting Carra's bill but instead making up some petition with Stand Up Michigan!? Why? The whole 7-10 minute conversation was so strange… I knew I was being lied to but I didn’t understand why.
I knew nothing of Michigan politics. I was a minister for 15+ years and completely out of politics. I had only moved to Michigan in 2020 so all these dynamics I could have no way of understanding. Why was Colbeck promoting Stand Up Michigan when he knew I was there with Carra? I will get back to this.
After the Cyber Symposium, Carra decided to transform his bill into a petition (A Ballot Initiative). About 15 of us gathered together to create a team for the petition. I was surprised to have been nominated to be on the board. I felt honored and was happy to serve. The next thing you know, Mellissa Carone was nominating me to lead the board!? She said, “Robert is the only one here not campaigning. He is an obvious leader and honest. I think we should have him lead the board.” But Jon Rocha was decided upon because he and Carra and others already had deals to promote each other’s campaigns and this Audit Petition would be a great platform for them to run on. After we started that board, the proverbial doo-doo hit the fan.
It's a very long story why I dropped off Rocha/Carra’s petition board. But I did it within a few weeks of being voted on. I saw the disfunction within the team, I saw Rocha’s intent to campaign off of this petition and his inability to keep his word and I knew without a doubt this petition would go no where. About the same time I was planning to leave the board, Melissa Carone started calling me.
A whole lot of controversy started around who actually had the rights to this (AuditMI) petition-language. Things got very very strange. Melissa Carone, Matt DePerno and Jovan Pultizer explained to me that this petition and bill does not belong to either Carra or Rocha. They wanted me to work with them in creating a new petition, going very public against Carra and Rocha, exposing these two for what DePerno, Pulitzer and Carone all felt was theft. To me it was pointless to go on the offense against Carra and Rocha (in an election year) plus it was too difficult to prove theft – I told Carone, DePerno and Pulitzer I was willing to talk about creating our own petition in competition with Rocha/Carra and team but I was unwilling to publicly assault them. DePerno was so upset with me that I would not attack them publicly that he started to disparage my name all throughout Michigan. Ending almost entirely any relationship with me altogether.
The bill with Carra was gone, I was uninvolved with the petition with Rocha, DePerno/Carone’s team would go nowhere without me or a new (sucker-) leader to do their bidding so I was back at the beginning. In my estimation there was no path for an audit, Rocha’s petition would fail (because he was too busy campaigning and did not have a team to support such a great work) plus (back to Stand Up) I knew that no one would support Rocha’s work. I had reached out to Armstrong more than 20 times at that point – several times while working with Carra on his bill and several times while on the board with Rocha. Armstrong never responded, not once.
I had become friends with Sandy Keisel (of EIF) throughout this process of bills and petitions and audits. I told Sandy, “I have THE PLAN for Michigan to deal with this Nov 3rd 2020 election fraud” but I would not tell her the plan. My trust had already been betrayed more than enough to realize that no one can be trusted throughout the Michigan GOP – everyone I had met was disingenuous, seeking to be elected, seeking for power and position before anything else. I knew I would need a good lawyer to help with the petition I wanted to do and I would need a good fundraiser! These petitions, to get passed, require large amounts of funding. I continued to build a working relationship with Sandy and EIF - hoping that they might be the answer to getting this petition off the ground!
January 2022 the miracle happened! I met this odd, off-the-beaten path, genius-syndrome attorney from Northern Michigan who agreed to help me write my petition, Pro-Bono!! The Miracle happened, kind of. I immediately started to see (let’s call it) irregularities in my new found attorneys character but what choice did I have? He was ingenious in matters of law, very good with the Michigan Constitution and seemed to share much of my vision. I was more or less stuck with him. We drafted THE PETITION TO DECERTIFY MICHIGAN’S 2020 ELECTION and then we went to work!
Interestingly enough, who helped me to draft the petition? Who led me to believe he would help me fundraising and put me on shows to get the word out there!? Who led me to believe he was going to support the effort personally?? Literally helping to draft the petition?? None other than Pat Colbeck! I knew I had to involve him. Colbeck wiggled his way into every single election integrity effort in the state of Michigan. Colbeck even help to create the Election Integrity Fund (EIF) - he was one of its founding members! There was no way I would get anywhere without him involved. Or, I had to know early on that he would come against me (I never thought for a moment Pat could be neutral). When Colbeck started helping write the petition, I was surprised and thought, "Maybe he isn’t so bad after all? Maybe I had misjudged him?" Me and my team launched two efforts, both at President Trump’s Rally in Washington, Michigan, April 1st 2022: The Petition to DeCertify the Election and AuditYourVote.com
There was word that maybe AuditYourVote.com was going to get space on the JumboTron! So we rushed to make a simple commercial to get the word out, but it never made the cut, to this day I don’t know why? So much happened so quickly. Sandy Keisel broke my trust very early on. I had trusted her and EIF to get petitions at the rally, to have volunteers ready to go, so that I could be doing my dog-and-pony show winning the big named supporters! When I got to the rally, I realized that Sandy was actually promoting EIF and often acting as if this petition was there’s – the petition was more of an aside than it was the purpose of us all being there. Understand, before that day, Sandy had led me to believe that she was going to quit her work at EIF to come and run the petition with me full-time. I thought we were in complete unison over the plan, there was never any discuss to the contrary. But the day we launched, the day at that Trump rally, I realized Sandy could not be counted on. Things went downhill from there.
Then, suddenly Ron Armstrong wanted to meet with me!? But he would only communicate thru Sandy? He acted as if I wasn’t trying to reach him, now more than 40 times! He never mentioned all my texts, phone calls and emails. He never mentioned how many people were encouraging him to have a meeting with me. He simply demanded of me to attend a zoom meeting with him and his team. Sandy too was awfully forceful on the matter – for this reason I lost my temper, yelling at Sandy, “Who’s side are you on Sandy?” I couldn’t believe she would throw me to the wolves like this. I was extremely clear with her that Armstrong was not to be trusted and yet there she was brokering some kind of deal behind my back. I told her and “My Lawyer” – “Do Not Get On That Zoom Meeting with Stand Up – You do not have my permission to speak for me, You do not have my permission to speak on the behalf of the petition!” Neither of them listened and attended the meeting against my direct instructions (Remember, everything was mine. AuditYourVote.com, the Petition, the Committee, the LLC, everything was in my name and my name alone. It was in writing the the lawyer was helping me and nothing more.)
If Armstrong had any good intentions with me he would have called me directly, man to man. If there was anything redeeming quality about him at all he would have at least had a phone call with me, at an absolutely minimum. If I was Armstrong, an older man, a Christian man, a man of such power and influence, I would have at least taken a meeting with me – after all I had by far the best movement in Michigan (arguably in the nation) that could remedy Nov 3rd 2020. But no. Armstrong offered no support, clearly nothing financial but worse than that! He decided to come against me publicly.
That was always his intention. Which I told Sandy and “My Lawyer”. I knew Armstrong was only doing this Zoom meeting to say, “I looked into it and realized that there was no chance it would succeed.” But that was a huge deception. Armstrong told me thru Sandy, "If your petition signers agree to sign our Secure MI Vote petition we will support you." But I didn't even believe that! I had already learned too much about these folks: Armstrong, Colbeck, and their "Christian" buddies. They had no intention ever to fix Michigan's election system and do you want to know how I know this as an absolute certainty?
Who funds Stand Up Michigan (the Stand Up Michigan that Colbeck sits on the board of)? Well, we know Mike Shirkey’s PAC does. That’s public record. I heard from a very credible source that Stand Up got 4 Million from Heritage Foundation in DC for their Secure My Vote petition. Stand Up Michigan could have had upwards of 10 Million in their accounts at the time I was launching my DeCertify Petition. Think of what they could have done to help!? Instead of destroy. But why is Ex State Senator Mike Shirkey an important part of the story? I’m glad you asked. What if I told you that Mike Shirkey and Ed McBroom (both came out publicly declaring 2020 was the safest election ever in Michigan’s history!) both ran the Senate Committee on Elections. What if I furthermore told you that Pat Colbeck was the Co-Chair of that Elections Committee!! And now Colbeck sits on the board of Stand Up, who receives large funds from Shirkey. Do the homework for yourselves. Listen very carefully, THE REPUBLICANS CREATED THE ELECTION SYSTEM IN MICHIGAN! Sec of State Ruth Johnson signed for the largest purchase of Dominion election machine equipment during her tenure and Pat Colbeck ran the MI Senate Committee on elections at that time, with Shirkey by his side! (MI Senator Ruth Johnson currently chairs the Senate Committee on Elections... by the way.)
Why on earth would Colbeck and Shirkey and the rest want to scrutinize an election system they helped create!? (And remember, McBroom was mentored by these two – here is his famous McBroom Report.)
It was a short three weeks after Colbeck hyped me up about all that he was going to do to help with AuditYourVote.com and the DeCertify Petition when without any warning he and Armstrong issued their public rebuke of our petition and movement.
If these two had anything decent about them: 1. They would have let me know what they were planning and given me a chance to change their minds, 2. Colbeck would have never led me to believe he was going to help and support the effort, 3. Colbeck would have tried to preserve the friendship, letting me know what led to his sudden change of heart/mind (out of no where). Etc.
What was almost more troubling was who they recruited to sign on with them! Rick Warzawak had only days before just promoted DeCertifying Michigan’s election at President Trump’s rally after meeting me, signing my petition publicly. Trucker Randy never so much as tried to contact me - i had several calls and texts into him also. But others: Joe Moss was a friend, he helped with web work early on when I was working with Carra, Joe and I had talked often – he too never even bothered to call. The list goes on. Imagine what we (Michigan) could have done if these “Christian Republicans” had supported the work instead of fighting against it!? But they would never. I watched Colbeck with great cunning and craft infiltrate and destroy every single chance we had in Michigan at Auditing the Election – all the while going on speaking tours about election integrity and working at Mike Lindell’s right hand!
The story only gets crazier from there. My lawyer stole 60,000 petitions from me. Sandy Keisel decided to support him, practically enabling him in his out and out theft. I called the lawyers’ pastor to try and convince him to return my petitions! But the pastors advice, “You will need to call the police I guess? He won’t speak with you or let me make peace.” Within a week the Attorney General’s office was involved! It was getting crazier by the day! The AG’s office asked me if I wanted to press charges? I declined. I just wanted my movement back. But the damage was total and complete by that point in time. Colbeck and Armstrong convinced many donors not to fund the movement in any way; word spread so fast throughout Michigan from these two and others lying about me, calling me a grifter and worse! What Colbeck and Armstrong weren’t able to accomplish, my lawyer was able to, creating such conflict within the movement and slowing me down about 4 weeks! I was living a literal nightmare.
The lawyer eventually went away and left me alone. Why? Because he ended up almost dying in the hospital! He was in the ICU for 2 or 3 weeks! It took all that for him to leave me and my movement alone! I never did call the state bar to report him. I don’t know why I gave that man such mercy. But I did.
It was May 2022 now and we only had a short month to collect signatures! The team went to work! It was amazing what we were able to accomplish all things considered. We got just short of 25,000 signatures! We had no budget. Only volunteers and me funding what I could, putting myself into terrible debt. We were against the strongest players in Michigan! All things considered we did pretty amazing – I want many of you who helped to hear this! We could have been successful without all these “Christian” GOPers against us! Perhaps sometime I will tell you all the whole story! I met with so many powerful GOP people throughout the nation about this petition, AuditYourVote.com and the work we were doing to fix the stolen election. I was able to get in touch with some of the biggest players in the Republican party nationwide, and most of them Christian! I don’t want to tell you all their names. I don’t want to tell you about so many around the President who refused to help. I wonder if President Trump ever even knew what we were doing? Does he know about AuditYourVote.com and the 100K+ missing votes for him we found? I spoke with at least 10 people (maybe more) who know him personally. I wonder if any of them brought it up?
What grieves me the most of all of this is that these were mostly Christians. Stand Up as an organization, functions almost entirely thru the churches!? I was a minister and missionary from 2008-2021’ish as a career, full time. Hearing Colbeck and Armstrong and their buddies on Trucker Randy’s radio broadcasts, Rick Warzawak’s prayer calls, and more was enough to make me sick! They spread out-in-out lies about me, calling me a grifter, insinuating I was some sort of a plant, attacking my person and character and doing everything in their power to recruit my key leaders out from under me, all while preaching the bible and running their movement thru God’s Holy Church!?
It's hard to believe anything that comes out of Stand Up Michigan. Why did their petition fail? Remember, Secure MI Vote petition to have voter ID’s? Who do they receive all their funding from? What are their actual intentions for the state of Michigan? Why do so many people continue to prop them up? How come Michigan, at large, continues to support people like this throughout it’s politics and government? Grieves me to say the least.
Until we Stand Up, Michigan and demand better leaders within our politics, until we stop empowering these sorts of professional deceivers and power-mongering politicians, the status quo will remain. Are we addicted to complaining? Are we merely content to repeat over and again how nothing will ever change? Or will we stop empowering these types of characterless and destructive men within our state from advancing their status quo agenda’s and finally change things!
I, for one, read that the US Constitution affords me the right to Liberty, wherein we once escaped the chains of tyranny to form a much better union; and I am not ready to lay down these rights because of a few, even within my own party, who will use any means necessary to advance a power and position over the will of the people, in direct opposition to the truth and that spirit which first made this nation so Great! This elitist and dictatorial manner of leadership is what “We The People” are sincerely striving against; we will either allow the power-brokers, political elites, polluted lobbyists, Wall Street Titans, global interests and purchased souls to destroy all that we hold dear (given to us by God in this nation) or we will Stand Up, draw a line in the sand and say, “This is enough” and “You shall not pass!”.
To Michigan, and to the rest of our Republic, I say, “Hold the line!” Watch who you are empowering and enabling. Take careful consideration where your $5, $10 and $100 donations are going. Take care what rallies you promote, even by your attendance. When you march and show your strength, is it for the cause of Justice and preserving this Constitution, truly? Or so yet another Ron Armstrong and Pat Colbeck can retain their power over you, only to strike you down when life fills your veins and you decide to make a difference for your state, for your generation?
It's going to take integrity, character, honor, a willingness to listen and learn, humility and love to win this nation for generations to come. We, the People, are battling on several fronts and we do have victories, great and small. But we need many more (servant) leaders. We need an entirely new generation with an entirely new vision to believe that a change is possible, and with great persistence and diligence perform their oaths, not unto man, but unto God who sees all things and will one day reward us openly for all that we have suffered in the darkness. But what if no one wants to do good? What if everyone is content to sell their will, soul and life’s efforts for wealth, reputation and advancement? How dark will the darkness become!?
It would be wonderful if the Armstrong’s and Colbeck’s of the world would repent and become something better! It would be nothing short of miraculous for DC and its world-wide capabilities to suddenly grow a heart and soul! But as the poets, song-writers and Holy Scriptures have all proclaimed throughout history, “The Change Starts with Us!”
The Light shines in the darkness and the darkness must flee. But it will take courage to believe and to live this way because the fear and doubt will do everything they can to lie and deceive us into thinking that they have the power. But who is this Light? Perhaps I will write about that in my next article? The Light remains the power.
For now, Michigan, I leave you with this hope: one man or woman standing on the truth has always been more powerful than a thousand willing to corrupt their souls for temporal gain, advantage and pleasure. But what if the good men say nothing? What if the best among us continue to enable the destruction and demise of all truth and goodness?
How dark the darkness will become.
Saying a prayer for you now, Michigan.
Saying a prayer for so many of you whom I know personally, vouch for and confide in!
There is a brighter future in store for all of us who believe!
God is with us…
So who can be against us?
Greatest of love,
Robert