Arizona indicts top Donald Trump aide over 2020 election manipulation scheme – Times of India

Los Angeles: Arizona’s attorney general said Wednesday that the state has charged 18 people with trying to sway the 2020 election by supporting Donald Trump, with US media identifying former presidential lawyer Rudy Chu as Rudy Giuliani among the accused.
The criminal indictment alleges a conspiracy to give Arizona’s electoral slate to a losing real estate mogul, the state’s latest effort to hold those supporters accountable. Trump’s false claims He won the presidential election.
Arizona Attorney General Chris Meyers said a grand jury issued indictments against 11 local Republicans, including the party’s former state chairman, as well as seven other out-of-state Republicans, whose names were withheld.
According to the Washington Post, the seven include Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, lawyers Jenna Ellis, John Eastman and campaign adviser Boris Epstein and Giuliani, who serves as Trump’s personal attorney.
The Washington Post said the former president himself was not charged, but was listed as an unnamed co-conspirator.
Democrat Joe Biden won the key electoral battleground of Arizona by just 10,000 votes, but many Republican officials insisted without evidence that there was fraud and that Trump was the real winner.
Electors (representatives of the winning candidates in each state) sign a formal document that is sent to Congress after the presidential election.
Even though Trump lost in Arizona, his delegates still signed documents saying he won.
The fake voter tactic is believed to be part of a plan to prevent Congress from certifying President Biden’s victory on January 6, 2021.
Arizona is the fourth state, after Michigan, Georgia and Nevada, to bring charges against those trying to assemble a replacement slate of electors.
Meadows, Giuliani, Ellis and Eastman have been indicted in Georgia, where Trump faces what could be the most explosive of the four criminal trials he faces.
Wednesday’s accusations come as Trump is again running for the White House and baselessly insisting he will win in 2020.
Polls show his race against the unpopular Biden is tight.
As a swing state and ground zero for electoral conspiracy theories propelled by right-wing Republicans, Arizona is expected to once again face stiff competition when Americans go to the polls this November.

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