The fake elector plot. Let's get right to NBC News
correspondent Vaughn Hilliard with the details.
Vaughn, what have you got?
Hey Joy, this is literally just in the last 60
seconds.
Arizona Attorney General Chris Mays is announcing the indictment of
the 11 electors out of Arizona from the 2020 election.
This has been a part of a year long investigation
for Chris Mays.
Of course there was a Republican Attorney General in the
aftermath of the 2020 election who never investigated the the
fake elector scheme on his part.
Upon taking office, she committed to this investigation and over
the better part of the last year she has gone
through this issuing subpoenas and having individuals testify before this
grand jury. And just here in the last hour in
Arizona,
Chris Mays in with the approval of a state grand
jury is now indicted 11 fake electors out of Arizona.
I should note, as we're beginning to make our way
through this indictment,
there are other individuals who are also included in this
indictment,
but they have not been served at those at this
time.
The indictment has those names redacted.
The 11 individuals who have been indicted,
who we have the names of,
include the likes of Kelly Ward who folks will recall
was the Arizona GOP Chairwoman at the time as well
as her husband,
as well as RNC committeeman out of Arizona,
Tyler Boyer who also serves as the Chief operating officer
of Turning Point USA,
that Trump aligned organization. You also have two current Arizona
State legislature legislators who are included in this indictment around
the in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
Joy the In some states,
right there is more secretive effort to keep the fake
elector scheme under wraps.
Right in the state of Georgia,
a secret meeting behind closed doors.
And Arizona was a little bit different,
more than a month after the 2020 election results,
as Donald Trump was applying a pressure campaign on the
likes of Maricopa County Board of Supervisors as well as
former House Speaker Rusty Bowers.
You folks may recall that at the Arizona GOP headquarters,
Kelly Ward, the GOP chairwoman of the same party at
the time,
actually convened a group of individuals,
including the 11 electors, one of whom she was to
actually have on video them going and signing the certificate.
At that point in time,
the certificate was sent to the National Archives in Congress.
So again, joy, literally as
you and I are discussing here,
we're just beginning our to make our way through this
indictment.
But now we have individuals who are electors in Georgia
and Michigan and now in Arizona as well who have
been formally indicted on state charges stemming from this alleged
scheme to send to Washington,
DC ultimately a different slate of electors to be counted
on January
6th, 2021. Don't go anywhere.
Von, I just want to hold on to you for
just a second.
Andrew Westman, I want to get first to your reaction.
I also want to get Tim hay fees reaction.
But I want to go to you first,
Andrew. Sure. I I I'm fascinated by the fact that
Vaughn is reporting that there were redacted names.
That was my question too.
Yeah. It's. Yeah. It's. And I wonder if Von
could speak to it sounds like they were able to
serve
people who are local, who might be
people. From that, would it be fair to infer that
there may be people who you know,
because the scheme as alleged in elsewhere in various indictments
is that people at the Trump campaign were orchestrating this.
In other words, this didn't come from the bottom up.
This was coming from DC down.
Is there a which From that could you infer that
at least some of the redacted names may be you
know people who are in the Trump campaign?
Right Andrew? I'm actually if you'll work with me.
I'm looking the same screen that I have my camera
on here,
123-4567. Names are redacted. So there were the 11 electors
make electors out of Arizona and seven additional names that
are redacted here.
When we are looking at multiple counts,
9 different counts count 1 conspiracy,
count 2 fraudulent schemes, count 3 fraudulent schemes and practices,
and counts 4 through 9 are forgery.
We also in all eleven of those individuals were all
indicted on all nine of those counts.
The seven redacted names we do not have the counts
on as well.
So I'm going to have to scan through this just
so folks know what we're scanning through here.
We're looking at from Arizona Attorney General Chris Mays,
a 58 page indictment that was signed here by the
four person just here in this last hour.
So to better answer everybody's questions here,
I'm going to work my way through this here in
real time.
If I may, guys. Yeah,
let me let you work through it.
So I'm going to take you off camera for a
minute,
let you work through that and let you keep reading.
I'm going to get Timothy Hafey to go ahead and
give us your response.
What do you, what do you make of all of
this?
Yeah, No, it sounds very consistent with the Michigan case,
with a portion of the Georgia case.
As Andrew said, this was a top down scheme.
It was the RNC and members of the Trump campaign
who were encouraging
electors in these contested states to submit certificates purporting to
be official.
That's where the crime comes in,
certifying falsely that that President Trump had won those states.
The signature on those documents and the attempt to
to have them considered by Congress is what makes them
fraudulent.
They are fake elector certificates.
The redacted names could very well be officials of the
Trump campaign.
Mike Roman comes to mind.
He's indicted in Georgia and was one of the people
who was on the phone organizing this activity with individuals
in Michigan,
in Arizona and in Georgia.
So my guess is it's the individuals in Arizona who
have been named.
And then it's some additional folks in Washington or elsewhere
that were part of the broader scheme to get all
seven of these contested states.
To submit these fake electorship gets all of that,
of course, sets up some predicate for dispute,
something for the vice president potentially to accept at the
joint session,
a basis on which members of Congress could object.
It was all part of a broader scheme led by
the former president.
That's what's at stake in these criminal cases in Washington.
In Georgia, Andrew, I'm not a math person,
but 11 electors indicted plus 9 redacted says 20 to
me.
A lot of people talked about how broad
the Georgia indictment was, but that indictment included fake electors,
people who were part of that scheme.
It also included not just people from the Trump campaign,
but very ostentatiously, people from the Trump White House,
including his chief of staff.
So if you're looking at an indictment this broad,
and you've got names redacted,
shouldn't that say feds to us as well?
Federal people who federal officials maybe.
But maybe yeah. I mean the only the thing I
just sort of think is if they unredacted the Arizona
people does,
you know I'm just sort of logically it would suggest
those people maybe outside of the state and given that
the scheme was really orchestrated as we keep on saying
top down, yeah, I'm going to be interested in whether
whether who the top people are that are getting indicted.
And remember, but for Donald Trump,
if he becomes president again,
he may have immunity. These state charges,
people should remember they stick.
There is no federal pardon power for these charges.
So when we find out the full panoply,
the pressure on them is great because they can't be
sitting there thinking,
oh I don't have to worry because Donald Trump it
becomes president.
He's going to pardon me,
that they're going to hold the bag.
Yeah. Just to be clear.
Let me let's let me go back to Vaughn really
quickly because we do have this list of redacted names.
Is there some way to eliminate the possibility that as
is the case in Georgia,
Trump's name is on that list.
It's a it's a very good question.
Joy. I we have no reporting that suggested that Donald
Trump
had received a subpoena or even a request to appear
before this grand jury.
So the extent to Chris Mays investigation
is still frankly not clear.
I think that when we're looking at Chris Mays here
again,
I I got to come back to the fact that
she didn't come into office until in
2023 here. Essentially she had a two year delayed start
in being able to pick up this investigation.
And when she came into office and the rates that
she won by just about two 70 votes,
she made the commitment. She said that she needed to
send a clear message that trying to overturn democratic elections
in the state of Arizona.
To those who attempt to do that,
that a clear message will be sent that they will
not be able to do that into the future.
And that she found it imperative to go forward with
this investigation despite others suggesting
3 1/2 years have passed at this point.
But we, the American public,
became familiar with Rusty Bowers Own story,
Of course. Rusty Bowers was the speaker of the Arizona
legislature at the time when he says and testified to
this,
that he got phone calls from the likes of Donald
Trump and allies urging him to send this alternate slate
of electors on behalf of the legislature.
Right. So these guys, on December 14th at Arizona GOP
headquarters,
they were all there on video signing their names,
saw eleven of them on this certificate that was sent
to Congress.
But they were also in real time trying to more
formally use the legislature to send and make that the
formal
certificate sent by the state of Arizona,
not the Biden slate of electors.
Rusty Bauer said sorry, we're not going with that game
plan.
We as the Arizona State legislature are sending the Biden
slate of electors.
Folks will also recall Joy Doug Ducey.
The governor was then the next individual who is a
part of that pressure campaign.
And folks will recall when he later that month in
December was literally signing the certificate
that Biden had won the state of Arizona,
his phone rang and it was Donald Trump that was
calling him and he turned it over and left it
on mute.
And so this, in the state of Arizona,
was the length to the means in which these individuals,
the chair woman of the state party,
as well as the RNC committeeman Tyler Boyer,
went. And now we know as an extension of this,
of course, Kerry Lake was,
I should be clear, was not a part of this
indictment here.
But they are. This is,
this is for all intensive purposes,
the Republican Party at the state of Arizona.
And now, in a critical moment here for the state
of Arizona and the Republican Party,
just six months out from a general election,
they have this indictment on their hands.
It's just a it's a it's a complicating scene and
one that I think that we're only beginning to
wholly understand the details. Absolutely stunning.