Allies of Donald Trump who were charged in Arizona for illegally trying to overturn the 2020 election can still expect to face justice despite his return to the White House, the state’s attorney general has said.
Kris Mayes told MSNBC on Sunday that she had “no intention” of dropping the criminal case against defendants including the former Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Christina Bobb, his former chief of staff Mark Meadows and senior officials of the Arizona Republican Party such as the former chair Kelli Ward and state senators Anthony Kern and Jake Hoffman.
A grand jury in April indicted 18 people in a “fake electors” scheme that sought to falsely declare Trump the winner in the crucial swing state instead of Joe Biden. Most pleaded not guilty in May to felony charges of fraud, forgery and conspiracy.
The fates of various criminal cases pending against Trump and his allies were left uncertain after his defeat of Kamala Harris in the November 5th election.
For instance, the US justice department is winding down its criminal cases in federal court against Trump.
In New York, state court judge Juan Merchan is preparing to rule on whether Trump’s conviction on charges of criminally falsifying business records to cover up hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels should be tossed out.
But Mayes has said she intends to stay the course with her office’s case.
“I have no intention of breaking that case up. I have no intention of dropping that case,” Mayes, a Democrat, told MSNBC’s Ali Velshi.
“A grand jury in the state of Arizona decided that these individuals who engaged in an attempt to overthrow our democracy in 2020 should be held accountable, so we won’t be cowed, we won’t be intimidated.”
In August, Loraine Pellegrino, the former president of a Republican women’s group, became the first of the defendants convicted when she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour charge of filing a false document.
Another of those accused, Jenna Ellis, a former Trump lawyer, agreed to co-operate with prosecutors, including sitting for interviews and handing over documents, in exchange for having her charges dismissed.
At the time, Mayes said Ellis’s insights were “invaluable and will greatly aid the state in proving its case in court”.
Also in August, the Arizona superior court judge Bruce Cohen denied a request by the remaining defendants to have the charges dismissed as “politically motivated” and set a provisional trial date for January 2026.
As a state case, anybody who is convicted in Arizona cannot be pardoned by Trump, who was referred to throughout the charging documents as an unindicted co-conspirator and as the “former president of the United States who spread false claims of election fraud following the 2020 election”.
The Arizona fake electors scheme was replicated in a number of swing states that ultimately all certified Biden’s victory. The most prominent took place in Georgia, where Trump is one of the defendants, although two charges against him were thrown out in September – and some of the 17 others originally charged have accepted plea deals in return for giving evidence to prosecutors.
Fani Willis, the Fulton county prosecutor who brought the Georgia case, was re-elected on November 5th. But no trial date has been set, and there is doubt over its timing given that Trump will be back in the White House in January.
The other defendants in the Arizona case include Kelli Ward’s husband, Michael; Robert Montgomery, former head of the Cochise county Republican Party; Tyler Bowyer, the Republican national committee’s Arizona representative; Greg Safsten, former executive director of the state Republican Party; and activists Samuel Moorhead and Nancy Cottle, who allegedly agreed to act as fake electors. – Guardian