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 Democrat announced Thursday.
The decision marks the third such fake elector case filed by states to be dismissed, though Mayes 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 case had charged 11 Republicans and five other people with forgery and conspiracy for their role in a scheme to submit a slate of fake electors to the Electoral College in December 2020. The defendants included Meadows, Giuliani, former Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward, and several other local GOP figures. The original indictment was returned in April 2024.
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. The Arizona Court of Appeals agreed with the defense and ordered the case returned to the grand jury, a decision the Arizona Supreme Court upheld on June 4 in a ruling the court’s chief justice wrote was “final.”
MSI previously reported that the Arizona Supreme Court upheld the order returning the fake elector case to a grand jury, ruling that the lower court had correctly applied the law. Read more
“This case is complex and will require substantial presentation of evidence and time to accommodate defendants’ request to testify and present evidence,” prosecutors wrote in 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.
The dismissal comes as similar fake elector cases in Michigan and Nevada have also been dropped or dismissed after prosecutors failed to get indictments returned. The cases have been a central part of the legal fallout from the 2020 election, with the Justice Department and state prosecutors pursuing charges against those who participated in the scheme.