Arizona Lawyer Normal Kris Mayes (D) on Sunday pledged to maneuver ahead with the state’s “fake electors” case in opposition to a number of allies of President-elect Trump, regardless of his latest victory within the 2024 election.
The case, which is ready to go to trial in January 2026, prices ex-White Home chief of workers Mark Meadows, former Trump private legal professional Rudy Giuliani and greater than a dozen different defendants with alleged crimes associated to a conspiracy to subvert the presidential election leads to Arizona in 2020.
In an interview with MSNBC’s Ali Velshi, Mayes stated she wouldn’t be intimidated into dropping the case just because Trump received the 2024 election.
“I have no intention of dropping that case,” Mayes stated within the interview. “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. And patriots across the country must stand up for our Constitution, for what is lawful,” she added.
Meadows and Giuliani are among the many 16 complete defendants with remaining prices, all of whom have pleaded not responsible.
The state has accused Giuliani of spreading false claims of election fraud and pressuring state and native officers to alter the end result of the election. Prosecutors additionally say he presided over a gathering in Phoenix after the election the place he accused officers of creating no effort to find out the accuracy of the election’s final result.
A number of different defendants, the so-called faux electors, signed a doc falsely claiming Trump received Arizona’s 2020 presidential election.
The alternate-electors scheme relied on then-Vice President Mike Pence certifying false slates of Trump electors in battleground states that went for Biden or for Pence to forged doubt on the legitimacy of the completely different slates and refuse to certify. Pence declined to take action, with the ensuing tensions culminating on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump is just not a defendant within the case however is described as “unindicted co-conspirator 1” in charging paperwork. He has been charged, nonetheless, in the same election conspiracy case in Georgia for his alleged efforts to overturn the outcomes of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
Prosecutors in Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada have additionally filed legal prices associated to the scheme, although in June the Nevada case was dismissed, a choice that state prosecutors have appealed.
Ella Lee contributed
