Trump's 2020 'fake electors' charged with state crimes in Arizona [View all]
Source: NBC News
April 24, 2024, 4:10 PM PDT / Updated April 24, 2024, 4:14 PM PDT
By Vaughn Hillyard and Dareh Gregorian
A state grand jury in Arizona on Wednesday indicted so-called "fake electors" who backed then-President Donald Trump in 2020, following a sprawling investigation into the alleged efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s win in the presidential election in the state.
One month after the 2020 election, 11 Trump supporters convened at the Arizona GOP’s headquarters in Phoenix to sign a certificate claiming to be Arizona’s 11 electors to the Electoral College, though Biden won the state by 10,457 votes and his electors were certified by state officials. The state Republican Party documented the signing of the certificate in a social media post and sent it to Congress and the National Archives.
Among those charged is Kelli Ward, who served as chair of the Arizona GOP during the 2020 election and the immediate aftermath. She tweeted on Jan. 6, 2021, after the attack on the U.S. Capitol: “Congress is adjourned. Send the elector choice back to the legislatures.” Ward was a consistent propagator of false claims that Arizona’s election results were rigged.
Others charged include: state legislators Anthony Kern and Jake Hoffman; Michael Ward, Kelli Ward’s husband; Tyler Bowyer, the RNC’s Arizona committeeman and the chief operating officer of the Trump-aligned Turning Point USA; Greg Safsten, the former Arizona GOP executive director; former U.S. Senate candidate Jim Lamon; Robert Montgomery, the former head of the Cochise County GOP; and Republican Party activists Samuel Moorhead, Nancy Cottle and Loraine Pellegrino.
Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trumps-2020-fake-electors-charged-state-crimes-arizona-rcna149214
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