Murray Wood: Who's hot... and who's not
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PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is dismissing a sprawling criminal case that alleged President Donald Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and others tried to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss in the state.
The decision announced Thursday marks the third such fake elector case filed by states to be dismissed, though the Democratic attorney general is vowing to bring it back to a grand jury in hopes of securing another indictment.
The legal maneuver is aimed at getting around a Friday deadline for starting new grand jury proceedings after Mayes lost an appeal earlier this month. The appeal was filed after defense attorneys argued successfully that the original grand jury hadn’t been shown the relevant parts of a law that governs how presidential contests are certified.
“This case is complex and will require substantial presentation of evidence and time to accommodate defendants’ request to testify and present evidence,” prosecutors wrote, explaining the new presentation of the case to a grand jury won’t happen by the deadline. Mark L. Williams, an attorney for Giuliani, said his client and the others charged in the case did nothing wrong and were only exercising their rights to free speech and to petition the government.
“This action was brought to punish Mr. Giuliani and the other Republican defendants for exercising their constitutional rights,” Williams said. “It’s appropriate that it’s being dismissed.”
Courts have dismissed similar cases in Michigan and Georgia, and a special prosecutor dropped a federal case in late 2024 that charged Trump with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. Those cases ended after Trump defeated Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024. Cases related to the fake elector scheme remain in Nevada and Wisconsin.
The Nevada charges were dismissed in 2024 after a judge concluded Clark County, the state’s most populous county and home to Las Vegas, was the wrong venue for the case. Later that year, though, the case was refiled in Carson City, Nevada’s capital.
The Arizona case had been stalled for well over a year while Mayes pursued the appeal.
In Arizona, defense lawyers argued the law allowed for multiple slates of electors to be submitted to Congress in case the results were disputed. Federal law was amended in 2022 to specify that any given state could put forward only one slate of electors and that state governors are responsible for signing off.
Joe Biden won Arizona in 2020 by 10,457 votes.
The state attorney general has faced steep challenges in making her case.
It was filed nearly three and a half years after the 2020 election and levels complicated conspiracy charges against the 18 defendants. A dozen dismissal requests filed by defense attorneys have slowed progress in court.
The first judge on the case recused himself in late 2024 after an email surfaced in which he told fellow judges to speak out against attacks on Harris’ campaign for the presidency. The next judge ordered the case to be sent back to a grand jury.
Of the 18 Arizona defendants, two were former Trump aides, five were lawyers working for Trump and 11 were Republicans who submitted a document falsely claiming Trump won Arizona.
Three defendants have resolved their cases, including one who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge.
The rest pleaded not guilty. Some said they signed the certificate in case Trump won court challenges and a new slate of electors was needed urgently before Congress’ Jan. 6 deadline to tally votes.
The case has factored into Arizona’s attorney general race, where both Republican challengers to Mayes have publicly said they will dismiss the charges if they were elected to the post. Mayes is running unopposed in the July 21 primary.
Jacques Billeaud, The Associated Press
