They are said to have falsely announced his victory in the state of Arizona in 2020: 18 people, including confidants of former US President Trump, have now been charged with election interference.
In the US state of Arizona, 18 people have to stand trial for possible voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Among them are presumably several confidants of former US President Donald Trump. They are said to be guilty of conspiring to rig the election and trying to make Trump’s re-election possible in 2020, the indictment says.
Defendants proclaimed Trump’s victory in Arizona
Arizona was one of seven states where Trump’s allies tried to secure the state’s so-called electoral votes for Trump, which were crucial to the election, even though they actually went to Joe Biden.
Eleven of the defendants are Republicans who were nominated as electors for the state of Arizona. They met in Phoenix on December 14, 2020, according to the indictment, to sign a document in which they described themselves as “the lawfully elected and qualified” electors and claimed that Trump had won the presidential election in the state.
A short video of the signing ceremony was posted on social media by the Arizona Republican Party at the time. The paper was later sent to Congress and the National Archives, where it was ignored. According to official information at the time, Biden won Arizona with a lead of more than 10,000 votes.
Confidants of Trump among the defendants
Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani is also among the defendants, admitted his spokesman Ted Goodman. Giuliani’s name and the names of seven other defendants have been redacted pending the indictment, the Arizona attorney general said. One of the people was redacted in court documents but was listed as chief of staff in 2020 – a position held at the White House by Mark Meadows at the time.
The court documents also list a “former US president” as an unindicted co-conspirator of the 18 defendants – who is most likely Donald Trump. Voter fraud is also the subject of two other criminal cases in Washington DC and Georgia in which Trump is accused of illegally trying to overturn Biden’s victory.