GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf will not face criminal charges in connection to a conspiracy to tamper with voting machines following the 2020 election, the special prosecutor selected to investigate says.

In a Thursday release, Prosecutor D.J. Hilson said Leaf would not be charged because there was “not sufficient evidence to prove a crime.”

Three other people — former state Rep. Daire Rendon, former attorney general candidate Matt DePerno and attorney Stefanie Lambert-Juntilla — have been charged with various felonies in the case after a grand jury heard evidence earlier this year.

No one else will be charged, Hilson’s Thursday release said.

“The decision not to issue charges on the other identified suspects, including Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf and (attorney) Jason Rybak, was based on careful consideration of the totality of the evidence gathered by investigators, review of the witness statements, evaluation of the law related to viable defenses, and decisions on what is fair and just,” the release read in part.

A year ago, Michigan Attorney Dana Nessel asked for a special prosecutor to look into allegations of the conspiracy. Hilson, the Muskegon County prosecutor, was selected as that special prosecutor in September 2022.

One machine involved was in Roscommon County, where Rendon allegedly told the county clerk that the state House was investigating “election fraud,” Nessel previously said. The Barry County clerk told News 8 in June 2022 that someone from the Barry County sheriff’s department had taken a Dominion voting tabulator from Irving Township in 2021. She said when the machine was returned, it had a broken security seal.

Hilson said that the county and municipal clerks who handed over voting tabulators were “deceived by some of the charged defendants.”

“The clerks had no idea of the scope, nature or duration of how their tabulators were going to be manipulated or that they would be out of their possessions for an extended period of time,” the prosecutor’s release continued.

Experts asked to look at the voting machines were also deceived, Hilson said, saying they were told that what was happening was legal.