Arizona AG: 'No intention' of dropping 'fake electors' case

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) on Sunday pledged to move forward with the state’s “fake electors” case against several allies of President-elect Trump, despite his recent victory in the 2024 election.

The case, which is set to go to trial in January 2026, charges ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and more than a dozen other defendants with alleged crimes related to a conspiracy to subvert the presidential election results in Arizona in 2020.

In an interview with MSNBC’s Ali Velshi, Mayes said she would not be intimidated into dropping the case simply because Trump won the 2024 election.

“I have no intention of dropping that case,” Mayes said in 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 16 total defendants with remaining charges, all of whom have pleaded not guilty.

The state has accused Giuliani of spreading false claims of election fraud and pressuring state and local officials to change the outcome of the election. Prosecutors also say he presided over a gathering in Phoenix after the election where he accused officials of making no effort to determine the accuracy of the election’s outcome.

Several other defendants, the so-called fake electors, signed a document falsely claiming Trump won Arizona’s 2020 presidential election.

The alternate-electors scheme relied on then-Vice President Mike Pence to certify false slates of Trump electors in battleground states that went for President Biden, or for Pence to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the different slates and refuse to certify. Pence declined to do so, with the resulting tensions culminating on Jan. 6, 2021.

Trump is not a defendant in the case but is described as “unindicted co-conspirator 1” in charging documents. He has been charged, however, in a similar election conspiracy case in Georgia for his alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state.

Prosecutors in Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada have also filed criminal charges related to the scheme, though in June the Nevada case was dismissed, a decision that state prosecutors have appealed.

Ella Lee contributed