Arizona attorney general says she has ‘no intention’ of dropping fake electors case

Story by Alexandra Marquez and Alex Tabet and Vaughn Hillyard. November 10, 2024.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said Sunday that she has “no intention” of dropping the criminal case against a group of President-elect Donald Trump’s allies who sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Arizona.

“I have no intention of breaking that case up. I have no intention of dropping that case. 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,” she added.

A state grand jury in April charged over a dozen allies of Trump for allegedly attempting to send a slate of alternate electors to the Electoral College in 2020. Joe Biden won the state by several thousand votes that year, leading the state to certify a slate of electors for him.

Trump is described as “Unindicted Coconspirator 1” in the indictment, which includes charges of conspiracy, fraud and forgery. The document also describes people who have been charged in the case but have not yet been served and whose names are redacted. Another passage of the indictment appears to describe attorney Kenneth Chesebro, one of the planners of the alleged scheme, as an unindicted coconspirator. Chesebro pleaded guilty last year in Georgia to conspiracy charges brought against him, Trump and 17 other people in the state. He is also believed to be one of the unidentified co-conspirators special counsel Jack Smith described in his federal election interference indictment of Trump last year.

Those charged include big names like former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

Others charged include Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward and her husband, Michael Ward; state Sen. Anthony Kern, Jake Hoffman; Robert Montgomery, the former head of the Cochise County GOP; Republican Party activists Samuel Moorhead, Nancy Cottle and Loraine Pellegrino; Greg Safsten, the former Arizona GOP executive director; former Trump attorney Christina Bobb; and Tyler Bowyer, the Republican National Committee’s Arizona committeeman and chief operating officer of the Trump-aligned Turning Point Action, former U.S. Senate candidate Jim Lamon, former Trump campaign and White House official Mike Roman; former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis; former Trump attorney Christina Bobb; and John Eastman, another attorney and Trump legal adviser in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

All have been arraigned on the charges and pleaded not guilty.

The case is set to go to trial in 2026, but the defendants have sought to have the case dismissed.