Democratic Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced Wednesday the indictments of 11 individuals for allegedly committing fraud by signing a 2020 document saying they were electors for former President Donald Trump, even though he lost the state’s election.
Republican state Sens. Jake Hoffman and Anthony Kern, are two of the individuals indicted.
Former Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Kelli Ward, her husband Michael Ward, Turning Point Action Chief Operating Officer Tyler Bowyer, Loraine Pellegrino, former Senate candidate Jim Lamon, Robert Montgomery, Samuel Moorhead and Greg Safsten were also indicted.
Others were also indicted but their names are not being released until they’re served papers, Mayes said.
“I will not allow American Democracy to be undermined,” Mayes said in a video comment. “We’re here because justice demands an answer to the efforts that the defendants and other unindicted co-conspirators allegedly took to undermine the will of Arizona’s voters during the 2020 presidential election.”
The accused gathered in Arizona’s state GOP headquarters in December 2020 and signed a certificate claiming to be Arizona’s electors and sent it to Congress. Trump lost to President Joe Biden by 10,457 votes, and the results were certified by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey and other state officials.
The indictments in Arizona aren’t the only ones made in different swing states that Trump lost in 2020. “Alternate electors” have been charged with similar crimes in Nevada, Michigan and Georgia.
Hoffman released a statement after publication.
“Before an investigation had even been conducted and with no evidence, Kris Mayes declared that she believed electors such as myself were guilty of a crime, that it was her job to get Biden re-elected, and that she would control the timing of the indictment,” said Senator Hoffman. “Now, unsurprisingly, we see that she has weaponized the once respected Attorney General’s office to deliver an indictment of her Republican political opponents years after the events at issue, long after other Democrat prosecutors made their decisions, and right before Arizona’s primary elections. Let me be unequivocal, I am innocent of any crime, I will vigorously defend myself, and I look forward to the day when I am vindicated of this naked political persecution by the judicial process.”
