An Arizona grand jury has charged 18 people involved in the scheme to create a slate of false electors for Donald Trump, including 11 people who served as those fake electors and seven Trump allies who aided the scheme.
Kris Mayes, Arizona’s Democratic attorney general, announced the charges on Wednesday, and said the 11 fake electors had been charged with felonies for fraud, forgery and conspiracy.
Beyond the fake electors themselves, high-profile Trump affiliates have been charged with aiding in the scheme: Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn, Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, Christina Bobb and Mike Roman.
Those charged over their roles as false electors include two sitting lawmakers, state senators Jake Hoffman and Anthony Kern. The former Arizona Republican party chair Kelli Ward and her husband, Michael Ward, have been charged, as has Tyler Bowyer, a Republican national committeeman and Turning Point USA executive, and Jim Lamon, who ran for US Senate in 2022. The others charged in the fake electors scheme are Nancy Cottle, Robert Montgomery, Samuel Moorhead, Lorraine Pellegrino and Gregory Safsten.
The indictment says: “In Arizona, and the United States, the people elected Joseph Biden as president on November 3 2020. Unwilling to accept this fact, defendants and unindicted co-conspirators schemed to prevent the lawful transfer of the presidency to keep unindicted co-conspirator 1 in office against the will of Arizona’s voters. This scheme would have deprived Arizona voters of their right to vote and have their votes counted.”
Biden won Arizona by more than 10,000 votes, a close margin in the typically red state that immediately prompted allegations of voter fraud that persist to this day. The state has remained a hotbed of election denialism, despite losses for Republicans who embraced election-fraud lies at the state level.
Trump has not been charged in the Arizona case.
The indictment refers to Trump himself as “unindicted co-conspirator 1” throughout, noting how the former president schemed to keep himself in office, and how those around him, even those who believed he lost, aided this effort.
Some involved have claimed they signed on as an alternate slate of electors in case court decisions came down in Trump’s favor, so they would have a backup group that could be certified by Congress should Trump prevail.
But, the indictment says, the defendants intended for these false votes to pressure former vice-president Mike Pence into rejecting the slate of accurate electors for Joe Biden during the electoral college vote-counting on 6 January 2021. Pence did not declare Trump the winner, use these fake electoral votes, or otherwise delay the official count.
Arizona’s charges are the latest turn in the fake electors saga. Seven states saw similar schemes, but two states – New Mexico and Pennsylvania – hedged their language in their documents enough to prevent prosecution.
Democratic attorneys general in Michigan and Nevada have indicted Republican fake electors in their respective states. In Georgia, three of 16 fake electors were indicted as part of a wide-ranging racketeering indictment against Trump and allies. The remaining were given immunity for helping in the district attorney’s investigation.
In Wisconsin, the fake electors acknowledged Biden’s win as a way to settle a civil lawsuit over the issue.
Mayes’ investigation fell behind other states because she narrowly won office in 2022, and her predecessor, Republican Mark Brnovich, had not pursued the line of inquiry. She had confirmed the investigation in early 2023.
The investigation – along with a host of other disagreements – have put Mayes at odds with Arizona’s Republican-led legislature, which started a committee to investigate Mayes and her office over concerns she was working beyond her authority as attorney general.
In a video on Wednesday, Mayes said the investigation was “thorough and professional” and would provide justice for the plot to overturn the state’s electoral votes.
“I understand for some of you today didn’t come fast enough, and I know I’ll be criticized by others for conducting this investigation at all,” she said. “I will not allow American democracy to be undermined – it’s too important.”
Hugo Lowell and Sam Levine contributed reporting
Source: Elections - theguardian.com
