Allies of Donald Trump charged in Arizona for illegal attempts to overturn the 2020 election can still expect justice despite his return to the White House, the state’s attorney general said.
Kris Mayes told MSNBC on Sunday that she was “not planning” to pursue criminal charges against suspects, including former Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Christina Bobb, his former chief of staff Mark Meadows and senior Arizona Republican Party officials such as the former Trump lawyers, to drop. chair Kelli Ward and state senators Anthony Kern and Jake Hoffman.
A grand jury in April indicted 18 people in a “fake voter” scheme that aimed to falsely declare Trump the winner in the crucial swing state instead of Joe Biden. Most pleaded not guilty in May to crimes of fraud, forgery and conspiracy.
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The fate of several pending criminal cases against Trump and his allies remained uncertain following his defeat of Kamala Harris in the November 5 election.
For example, the US Department of Justice is finalizing criminal cases against Trump in federal court.
And in New York, Judge Juan Merchan is preparing to rule on whether to throw out Trump’s conviction on charges of criminally falsifying business records to cover up hush-money payments to adult film actor Stormy Daniels.
But Mayes has said she plans to stay the course with her office’s case.
‘I have no intention of closing the case. I have no intention of dropping this case,” Mayes, a Democrat, told MSNBC’s Ali Velshi.
“An Arizona grand jury has decided that these individuals who engaged in an attempt to overthrow our democracy in 2020 must be held accountable so that we will not be cowed and intimidated.”
In August, Loraine Pellegrino, the former president of a Republican women’s group, became the first of the defendants to be convicted when she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of filing a false document.
Another of the suspects, Jenna Ellis, a former Trump lawyer, agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, including for interviews and handing over documents, in exchange for her charges being dismissed.
Mayes said at the time that Ellis’ insights were “invaluable and would greatly assist the state in proving its case in court.”
Also in August, Arizona Supreme Court Justice Bruce Cohen denied a request by the remaining defendants to dismiss the charges as “politically motivated” and set a tentative trial date for January 2026.
As a state matter, anyone convicted in Arizona cannot be pardoned by Trump, who was identified in charging documents as an unindicted co-conspirator and as the “former president of the United States who spread false claims of election fraud after the 2020 election.” .
Related: What is voter certification – the process Trump focused on in 2020?
Arizona’s bogus electoral scheme was repeated in a number of swing states, all of which ultimately certified Biden’s victory. The most prominent occurred in Georgia, where Trump is among the defendants, though two charges against him were dismissed in September — and some of the seventeen others originally charged have accepted plea deals in exchange for giving testimony to prosecutors .
Fani Willis, the Fulton district attorney who brought the Georgia case, was re-elected on November 5. But no date has yet been set for the trial, and its timing is in doubt as 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; Arizona Republican National Committee Representative Tyler Bowyer; Greg Safsten, former executive director of the state Republican Party; and activists Samuel Moorhead and Nancy Cottle, who reportedly agreed to act as fake voters.
