Arizona grand jury wanted to indict Trump in fake electors case
A state grand jury in Arizona that charged 18 people this spring in a scheme that sought to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss wanted to indict him, too, according to court papers released Tuesday.
But prosecutors, the papers said, recommended that Trump should not be charged, citing a Justice Department policy that discourages bringing state and federal cases against the same defendant that are largely based on similar facts.
The court papers, filed in Phoenix by the Arizona attorney general’s office, revealed for the first time that the grand jurors investigating allegations of interference in that state’s election seriously considered bringing charges against Trump. Some of the grand jurors even appeared to be upset when a state prosecutor suggested they should not.
“I have not recommended that in the draft indictment, despite clear indications from you all that there’s an interest in pursuing a charge against him,” the papers quoted the unnamed prosecutor as saying of Trump.
“I know that may be disappointing to some of you,” the prosecutor added.
When the Arizona case was filed in April, it accused some of Trump’s top allies of conspiring with a group of Republican operatives to create a slate of fake electors who declared he had won the race in Arizona when the actual winner was Joe Biden. Among those charged were Rudy Giuliani, who had been Trump’s personal lawyer, and Mark Meadows, his former White House chief of staff.
Though Trump was never charged in the case and his name did not appear in the 58-page indictment, he was mentioned several times as Unindicted Co-Conspirator 1, described as “a former president of the United States who spread false claims of election fraud following the 2020 election.”
In the past year or so, five states, including Arizona, have filed criminal cases focusing on the fake elector scheme, which has long been one of the most expansive and complicated schemes used by Trump in his attempt to stay in power.
But only one of the cases — filed in Georgia — has formally included him as a defendant. Like the case in Arizona, the other proceedings — in Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin — have identified him only as an unindicted co-conspirator.
Aside from the case in Georgia, Trump has also been accused in a federal case in Washington of plotting to reverse his loss to Biden. That indictment charges him with what prosecutors have described as “a multipronged endeavor to overturn the 2020 presidential election, disenfranchise voters and obstruct the transfer of presidential power.”
The Georgia case is bogged down in litigation over whether Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, should be disqualified because of a romantic relationship she had with one of her top deputies.
The federal case in Washington is set to spring back to life next week after eight months in limbo as the judge overseeing it holds a hearing to determine how to apply the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling last month granting Trump broad immunity from criminal prosecution for acts arising from his presidency.
The Arizona case, which was initially filed by Kris Mayes, the Democratic state attorney general, is not expected to go to trial until next year at the earliest. In June, the defendants filed their opening challenge to the charges, seizing on a new state law aimed at curbing litigation and prosecutions involving political figures.
On Monday, Mayes said that she had secured her first cooperation deal in the case, announcing that Jenna Ellis, a lawyer who played a major role in Trump’s efforts to remain in power, had agreed to testify against the other defendants. Ellis had already pleaded guilty last year in the Georgia case and reached a similar cooperation deal with prosecutors there.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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