Trump’s 2020 'fake electors' charged with state crimes in Arizona
The indictments follow an investigation led by Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, into efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 election.
www.nbcnews.com
A state grand jury in Arizona on Wednesday indicted so-called "fake electors" who backed then-President Donald Trump in 2020, following a sprawling investigation into the alleged efforts to overturn Joe Biden's win in the presidential election in the state.
One month after the 2020 election, 11 Trump supporters convened at the Arizona GOP's headquarters in Phoenix to sign a certificate claiming to be Arizona's 11 electors to the Electoral College, though Biden won the state by 10,457 votes and his electors were certified by state officials. The state Republican Party documented the signing of the certificate in a social media post and sent it to Congress and the National Archives.
Among those charged is Kelli Ward, who served as chair of the Arizona GOP during the 2020 election and the immediate aftermath. She tweeted on Jan. 6, 2021, after the attack on the U.S. Capitol: "Congress is adjourned. Send the elector choice back to the legislatures." Ward was a consistent propagator of false claims that Arizona's election results were rigged.
Others charged include: state legislators Anthony Kern and Jake Hoffman; Michael Ward, Kelli Ward's husband; Tyler Bowyer, the RNC's Arizona committeeman and the chief operating officer of the Trump-aligned Turning Point USA; Greg Safsten, the former Arizona GOP executive director; 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.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, won her election to be the state's chief prosecutor in November 2022, replacing Republican Mark Brnovich, a one-time ally of Trump who later earned the former president's scorn for not substantiating Trump's claims of election fraud in the state.
"We have to make sure that it's clear to everyone it's unacceptable to try to steal an election, to undermine and overthrow an election, and that's what happened," Mayes told MSNBC last year after her election victory. "We have to make sure what happened in 2020 never happens again."
The Arizona charges are the latest example of Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election sprouting into legal cases during his 2024 bid to retake office.