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Stacey LaRouche, press secretary for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, said the announcement means that 1,700 new jobs and billions worth of investments are coming to the state to help the economy grow.

While living in Chicago at age 25, Fisher was convicted in 2012 of aggravated sexual abuse of a 14-year-old boy, a conviction Fisher has claimed to be the result of a "railroad job" created by the political action committee for Lyndon LaRouche, a serial fringe presidential candidate and known conspiracist.

Fisher, who once worked for LaRouche's committee, referred to it as a "cult," saying he was set up by the organization as he was trying to distance himself from it.

Devotees of the personality cult of the late Lyndon LaRouche—a perennial presidential candidate who was convicted of mail fraud—went up to attendees and asked them if they were familiar with George Washington’s Farewell Address before trying to sell them on a fringe Senate candidate in New York.

At least two people have previously run for president with criminal convictions - socialist candidate Eugene Debs in 1920, convicted over a 1918 anti-war speech; and conspiracist Lyndon LaRouche, convicted of fraud, one of whose eight runs for president in 1992 was from a federal prison in Minnesota.