By Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services
PHOENIX -- President Trump has issued federal pardons to everyone connected with his various efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.
But none of that will help the 18 people who were indicted here on state charges in connection with what Attorney General Kris Mayes was their scheme to have the votes of 11 "fake electors'' from Arizona counted that year instead of the real ones.
Still, it comes as Mayes has less than two weeks to decide whether to renew that case after the grand jury indictment against them was dismissed. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sam Myers said her prosecutors did not present all the relevant information to the jurors who handed up the indictment last year.
Even if the indictment is resurrected -- or she takes the case back to a new grand jury -- Mayes still faces the fact that Myers said there is at least some reason to believe that she is going after the defendants for their political views. Myers has deferred a final ruling on that until the question of the indictment is resolved.
And there's something else that could affect a final decision: Mayes, who narrowly won her office in 2022 by just 280 votes, is seeking reelection this coming year.
"Politicians always think about the next election,'' said Anthony Kern, a former state senator is one of those indicted on charges of fraud, conspiracy and forgery. And that, he said, has to be on her mind if she has to start over again.
"By the time she picks a new grand jury and is well into that process, she's going to be well into the 2026 election cycle,'' Kern said. "And I don't think she wants that albatross hanging over her head.''
Dennis Wilenchik who is defending James Lamon in the case, has his own take.
"I think it's another message to Kris Mayes to move on,'' he said. And Wilenchik also said the upcoming election also is a factor.
"If she doesn't move on it's going to cost her politically,'' he said. "I think everybody's tired of it.''
And Jake Hoffman, a current state senator seeking reelection who also was indicted, said the pardon "serves as further evidence of what I've said all along: I'm innocent and will be vindicated by the judicial process.'' He also said what happened in Arizona was not by chance.
Hoffman also said all this was part of a `coordinated conspiracy'' by the Biden administration to weaponize the FBI, the Department of Justice and state prosecutors.''
Richie Taylor, a spokesman for Mayes, would not comment on the presidential action.
He acknowledged the Nov. 21 deadline for his boss to decide what to do next in the case. But he said that no decision has been made.
Still, there could be reason to believe that the case may go away.
While the indictment dates only from 2024, it is based on activities right before and after the 2020 election where 11 Arizonans and others linked to Trump's reelection effort are charged with coming up with a scheme to tell Congress that the state's 11 electors should be credited to Trump despite the fact that Joe Biden got 10,457 more votes than the incumbent.
Since then, Biden gave up on his own bid for reelection. And Vice President Kamala Harris, who headed the 2024 ticket for Democrats lost the race, not only nationally but here in Arizona by more than 187,000 votes.
Some similar cases against electors and Trump allies have fallen apart in other states, with a Michigan judge tossing the charges and the case stalled in Georgia after Fulton County Attorney Fani Willis was disqualified from pursuing the charges over a "significant appearance of impropriety'' related to a romantic relationship she had with a top prosecutor on the case.
Prosecutors in New Mexico and Pennsylvania never brought charges.
Other cases in Nevada and Wisconsin, however, remain alive.
Central to all of the cases is the claim that Trump and his allies created a scheme to have Republicans in battleground states submit paperwork claiming they were the legal electors. If nothing else, that was designed to get Mike Pence, then the vice president and the presiding officer of the Senate, to refuse to accept the official results form Arizona and other states and prevent Biden from getting the necessary 270 electoral votes.
The indictment named not just the 11 people who signed the certificate that was sent to Congress declaring Trump had won Arizona but also those in the Trump orbit. That includes former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and several of Trump's attorneys including John Eastman, Chrstina Bobb and Rudy Giuliani.
Another Trump attorney, Jenna Ellis, already has deal to have the charges dismissed based on a promise to cooperate with prosecutors.
Also on the pardons list was Kenneth Chesebro, who had been a legal adviser to the Trump campaign. He had already had met with investigators in Arizona even before the indictment was issued and was never charged along with the others. And Mayes already has put him on a list of witnesses she intends to call when the case goes to trial.
What Trump issued grants "full, complete, and unconditional pardon'' for anything related to "advice, creation, organization, execution, submission, support, voting, activities, participation in or advocacy for any slate or proposed slate of presidential electors.'' And it is written in a way to support Trump's ongoing contention that he didn't lose to Biden, pardoning those on the list for "any conduct relating to their efforts to expose voting fraud and vulnerabilities in the 2020 Presidential Election.'
Who is not on the list is Trump himself despite the fact that the president has openly toyed with the question of whether he has the power to pardon himself should a future administration decide to revisit the issue.
All this is on top of the president's decision on his first day back in office to issue blanket pardons to nearly 1,600 who had been charged -- and in some cases convicted -- of federal crimes associated with the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the day Congress was reviewing the electoral votes from Arizona and other states.
If Mayes continues the case, whether because the Supreme Court overturns Myers' decision the indictment was flawed or deciding to convene a new grand jury, the next legal battle is over something called the Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation law.
In essence, that law says that defendants in cases can ask for dismissal -- even before a trial -- if they can prove "the legal action was substantially motivated by a desire to deter, retaliate against, or prevent the lawful exercise of a constitutional right.''
Myers ruled earlier this year that there was at least some evidence presented by defendants that the charges were brought at least in part over some of their exercise of their rights of petition and speech. There has been no final ruling, with all that pending whatever happens with the grand jury indictment.
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