A state grand jury in Arizona on Wednesday indicted Trump aides including Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows and Boris Epshteyn, as well as so-called “fake voters” who supported then-President Donald Trump in 2020, following an extensive investigation into alleged efforts to sway Trump’s victory Undoing Joe Biden in the state’s presidential election.
A month after the 2020 election, 11 Trump supporters gathered at the Arizona GOP headquarters in Phoenix to sign a certificate claiming to be Arizona’s 11 electors to the Electoral College, even though Biden won the state with 10,457 votes and state officials have been certified as voters. The Republican Party documented the signing of the certificate in a social media post and sent it to Congress and the National Archives.
Trump is described in the indictment as “Unindicted Coconspirator 1,” which includes charges of conspiracy, fraud and forgery. The document also describes people charged in the case but not yet served and whose names are redacted: Meadows, the former White House chief of staff; Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and Trump attorney; Epshteyn, a Trump campaign official and lawyer; former Trump campaign and White House official Mike Roman; former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis; former Trump attorney Christina Bobb; And Johannes Oostmananother lawyer and legal advisor to Trump in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
Epshteyn sat at the defense table with Trump last year when he was indicted in his hush money case in New York, although he did not appear during the trial.
Those charged in Arizona include Kelli Ward, who chaired the Arizona Republican Party during the 2020 election and its immediate aftermath. She tweeted on January 6, 2021, following the attack on the US Capitol: “Congress is adjourned. Send the voters’ choice back to the legislature.” Ward was a Trump voter and a consistent spreader of false claims that the election results in Arizona were rigged.
Others accused along with Ward of being “fake voters” were: state legislators Anthony Kern and Jake Hoffman; Michael Ward, Kelli Ward’s husband; Tyler Bowyer, Arizona Republican National Committee board member and chief operating officer of Trump-affiliated Turning Point USA; Greg Safsten, the former executive director of the Arizona GOP; former U.S. Senate candidate Jim Lamon; Robert Montgomery, the former head of the Cochise County GOP; and Republican Party activists Samuel Moorhead, Nancy Cottle and Loraine Pellegrino.
Another passage from the indictment appears to describe attorney Kenneth Chesebro, one of the alleged scheme’s planners, as an unindicted co-conspirator. Chesebro pleaded guilty in Georgia last year to conspiracy charges against him, Trump and seventeen other people in the state. He is also believed to be one of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s unidentified co-conspirators, who was detailed last year in his federal election interference indictment against Trump.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, led the investigation. She won her election as the state’s chief prosecutor in November 2022, replacing Republican Mark Brnovich, a former Trump ally who later earned his scorn for failing to substantiate his claims of election fraud in the state.
“We have spent the last thirteen months conducting a thorough and professional investigation into the bogus voter program in our state,” Mayes said in a video announcing the charges. “I understand that for some of you the day didn’t come soon enough. And I know I will be criticized by others for conducting this research in the first place. But as I have said before, and we will say it again here today: I will not allow American democracy to be undermined.”
The Arizona charges are the latest example of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, which culminated in lawsuits during his 2024 bid to regain office.
Arizona was one of seven states where “alternative voters” signed paperwork falsely claiming Trump had won the states. Prosecutors have already charged “alternative electors” in Nevada, Georgia and Michigan.
Chesebro and others, including Eastman, argued in the months after the 2020 election that then-Vice President Mike Pence could use the existence of the alternate electors to declare Trump the winner of the election while he was running on January 1 in Congress presided over the counting of electoral votes. 6.
Eastman wrote in a memo: “Ultimately, he announces that due to the ongoing litigation in the seven states, there are no electors who can be considered validly appointed in those states. … There are currently 232 votes for Trump, 222 votes for Biden. Pence then gives President Trump a vote to be re-elected.”
Trump lost Arizona by just under 11,000 votes. As Republican voters sent illegal certificates to Washington, Trump tried to pressure Maricopa County officials and other Arizona Republicans, including then-House Speaker Rusty Bowers and then-Gov. Doug Ducey.
Trump called Ducey directly as the governor announced the state’s election results. Ducey muted the conversation.
Mayes’ tenure as Arizona attorney general was marked by other election cases arising from Trump’s false claims of fraud in the 2020 election and beyond.
Last fall, Mayes sued two local officials who delayed the certification of the 2022 midterm election results in Cochise County. Officials voted against certifying the county’s election results within the legal deadline after months of making baseless accusations about the integrity of the election. The province only announced its election results after a court ordered it to do so.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
