Still more charges for Trump confederates
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) is still investigating the 2020 fake electors scheme “to keep Unindicted Coconspirator 1 in office.” But as of Wednesday, she’s charged 18 people associated with the plot with felony counts of conspiracy, fraud and forgery. The indictment caps off a year-long investigation into the fraudulent slate of Donald Trump electors sent to Congress after Joe Biden won Arizona by 10,457 votes. Similar schemes played out in Michigan, Georgia and Nevada.
Redacted in the indictment are seven names of individuals living outside Arizona. The Washington Post, however, identifies them as some of Trump’s closest allies and advisers:
Those indicted include former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman and Christina Bobb, top campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn and former campaign aide Mike Roman. They are accused of allegedly aiding an unsuccessful strategy to award the state’s electoral votes to Trump instead of Biden after the 2020 election. Also charged are the Republicans who signed paperwork on Dec. 14, 2020, that falsely purported Trump was the rightful winner, including former state party chair Kelli Ward, state Sens. Jake Hoffman and Anthony Kern, and Tyler Bowyer, a GOP national committeeman and chief operating officer of Turning Point Action, the campaign arm of the pro-Trump conservative group Turning Point USA.
Trump himself remains unindicted in Arizona for now.
The effort was aided by Trump, the indictment said, who “himself was unwilling to accept that he had lost the election.” While the charges focus on the elector strategy, the indictment spells out various ways that Trump and his allies sought to pressure state and local officials to “encourage them to change” the election results. Trump allies initially put pressure on members of the Phoenix-area Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, the indictment said. When it became clear that the GOP-led board would not alter the results, pressure was placed on members of the state legislature — namely then-House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R) — who heard from Trump and other allies.
When that effort failed, Trump sought to appeal to then-Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R), who ignored a call from Trump while certifying the state’s election results. That day, the indictment notes, Trump berated Ducey on social media for certifying the results.
Everything Trump touches gets indicted
The Post notes that this is the second round of charges so far for “Meadows, Giuliani, Ellis, Eastman and Roman, who were all indicted alongside Trump in Georgia last year. Ellis pleaded guilty in October to illegally conspiring to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia and has been cooperating with prosecutors.”
Notable omissions include Kenneth Chesebro, one of the progenitors of the elector strategy with Eastman. In October, he pleaded guilty in Georgia to one felony count of “conspiracy to commit filing false documents.” Also missing from the indictment is lawyer Sidney Powell. She pleaded guilty in Georgia to “six misdemeanors accusing her of conspiring to intentionally interfere with the performance of election duties.” One may surmise that Chesebro’s and Powell’s cooperation in the Arizona investigation kept them out of Wednesday’s indictment.
Trump is a Republican candidate for president again in 2024, even while on trial in New York and with criminal trials pending in three other jurisdictions. He is not running for president. He is running to keep from spending the rest of his life on trial or in jail. Trump is betting on the presidency empowering him to shut down federal investigations into himself and to exact revenge on his enemies. (Republicans like their twofers.)
This morning, Trump’s attorneys will argue before the U.S. Supreme Court that the president is and must be immune from prosecution for his actions in office. They do not expect to win. Their goal is to keep Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 case from going to trial before the November election. Trump is charged with “conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.”
“We already pulled off the heist,” a source close to Trump told Rolling Stone. They were “literally popping champagne” when the court agreed to take the case in February and delayed hearing it until today. Do not expect a ruling from the conservative court until late June/early July. Beginning a trial before November is unlikely but not impossible.
The addition of charges in Arizona for which Trump, if elected, cannot issue pardons, will increase pressure on the newly indicted and re-indicted to cooperate with authorities in return for reduced charges. Trump’s deodorant will need to file for overtime. For which, by the way, millions of workers will soon be eligible thanks to a new rule issued by Biden’s Department of Labor on Tuesday.
Also Tuesday, Republican voters in Pennsylvania’s closed primary signaled their exhaustion with Trump by handing 16.6% of their votes to Nikki Haley who suspended her race after Super Tuesday (March 5). Trump sits in a New York courtroom while President Biden campaigns there and racks up union endorsements.
It’s going to be a long, hot summer for Team MAGA while Dark Brandon keeps cool in his aviators.
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