11 Arizona Republicans met on December
14th, 2020 at Republican Party headquarters in Phoenix and signed
documents representing themselves as the duly elected and qualified electors
for President and Vice President of the United States of
America from the State of Arizona.
And then they transmitted those documents to the National Archives
and to Congress
for counting by Vice President Mike Pence on January 6th,
even though Joe Biden had won Arizona by more than
10,000 votes.
And you know the rest
now. Tonight, Arizona Attorney General Chris Mays has indicted those
11 fake electors on felony criminal charges,
along with seven other Co conspirators affiliated with Trump's 2020
presidential campaign.
Those Co conspirators are names that will be familiar to
you.
According to reporting from multiple outlets.
They are Mark Meadows, Trump's former White House Chief of
Staff,
Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman and Christina Bob,
all of whom were lawyers advising or representing Donald Trump
in various post election lawsuits and schemes.
Along with Trump campaign officials Boris Epstein and Mike Roman.
Now the 11 Arizona fake electors were part of a
multi state scheme to help President Trump overturn the results
of the 2020 election.
But tonight marks the first time that criminal charges are
being brought in the state of Arizona.
We're here because justice demands an answer to the efforts
that the defendants and other unindicted Co conspirators allegedly took
to undermine the will of
Arizona's voters during the 2020 presidential election.
Arizona's election was free and fair.
The people of Arizona elected President Biden
unwilling to accept this fact.
The defendants charged by the state grand jury allegedly schemed
to prevent the lawful transfer of the presidency.
A state grand jury made-up of everyday regular Arizonans has
now handed down felony indictments
for all 11 Republican electors,
as well as several others connected to this scheme.
These charges include fraud, forgery,
and conspiracy. These charges are Class 2,
four and five felonies. These are serious indictments.
As for Donald Trump himself,
he is not charged in this indictment,
but he does appear as Unindicted Co Conspirator #1.
Joining me now are NBC News correspondent Vaughn Hilliard and
Lisa Rubin,
MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa First,
my first thought when I read this was,
OK, who's going to bleed out just because we saw
a sort of similar scenario minus Trump
or plus Trump in Georgia,
and we've seen plea deals there.
And I just wonder,
this is a fairly relatively wide net 18 people in
this
is your expectation that some of them are going to
plead out and become witnesses for the state?
Yes, although some of the usual suspects are already unindicted
Co conspirators here because they chose in advance of the
indictment to cooperate.
Namely Ken Chesbro appears to be unindicted Co conspirator 4
in this indictment.
There is also no role here for Sydney Powell who
is the other person to have pled out in Georgia.
On the other hand, you have all 11 Arizona alternate
or fake electors indicted here.
Chances are that more than one of them will eventually
plead out and give their cooperation.
It is notable that Vaughn that
that Kenneth Chesboro seems to be,
and this is according to some reporting in the Washington
Post,
that he seems to have been an important source in
all of this.
And I'll read an excerpt from the Post reporting tonight.
Chris Mays, the Attorney General,
had been squarely focused on local conservatives up until late
last year.
Then Arizona prosecutors and investigators met in December with Kenneth
Chesboro.
Chesboro provided May's team with records,
some previously unseen, that revealed more information about those involved
in the Arizona effort.
After that, they said, the Arizona investigation widened.
How did she go about this,
Vaughn? Because it sounds like she started kind of near
the top,
which is the inverse of how.
I don't know. The DOJ has approached the January 6
related controversies,
the Arizona targets for the easiest of targets because as
you said,
Alex, they did it out in the open.
They were openly tweeting about it.
They're openly posting the video of what they did on
December 14th when they signed the certificate,
the fake certificate, and sent it to Washington,
DC. These other seven individuals,
the likes of John Eastman to Rudy Giuliani to Christina
Bob,
that are still redacted in this indictment because they have
yet to be actually served here.
These were individuals that were tougher targets here in part
of a greater
a conspiracy that is outlined by Chris Mays.
This investigation we first reported on this last summer and
clearly she had,
I guess we could call it easier targets.
She could have just focused on the 11 electors,
but Chris Mays, who came into office in January of
last year and clearly intended to target and make it
clear that this conspiracy was not only a threat to
the 2020 election but also the
2022 election and potentially future elections,
and clearly made the decision to proceed in a castle
wider net.
And if I may, what is notable about her indictment
here is the fact that she specifically outlines the fact
that she contends that the 11 electors
and as well as these other seven who were indicted
as well that were Trump attorneys or Trump campaign officials
that they intended to deceive the Arizona voters.
I just want to read part of this Defendants deceived
the citizens of Arizona by falsely claiming that those votes
were contingent only on a legal challenge that would change
the outcome of the election.
In reality, defendants intended that their false votes for Trump
Pence would encourage Pence to reject the Biden Harris votes
on January
6/20/21, regardless of the outcome of the legal challenge.
I was there on the ground in Arizona as all
of this was unfolding,
Alex, and I can tell you,
I remember so distinctly that they were just making the
case that,
well, this is just an if in the scenario we
actually found fraud that make Pence could then go this
route.
But what Chris Mays is outlining this indictment is that
this was a conspiracy intended for on January 6 or
in those two weeks to follow to seat Donald Trump
as President, whether he actually had
270 Electoral College votes or not.
Yeah. And we actually, I,
I was struck by the same passage in the indictment.
Vaughn, can we bring it back up again?
Lisa, this seems legally very,
very significant that that the sort of cover under which
some of these fake electors have operated not just in
Arizona but in other states.
Well, this was a contingency plan.
She completely disassembles that in the.
I thought that that passage about the e-mail sent from
Unindicted Co Conspirator 5
to a Pennsylvania attorney is really damning because it says
also just FY.
I I recall now there was a rush to file
our petition in order to give legal cover for the
electors in Arizona to vote on the 14th.
That
e-mail is stunning and that has been in the public
domain before.
In fact, you can identify from other public reporting who
the unindicted Co conspirator is,
but I had forgotten about these details.
It's just like many of the details and the hush
money trial that's currently going on are things that we
have known for years.
So too is this an e-mail that's been out in
the public domain but juxtaposed against all of the litigation
that was filed in Arizona to see it one after
the other after the other fail.
And then this admission from the unindicted Co conspirator,
Ohh. By the way, this was the cover.
We we were supposed to file this other lawsuit in
order to give legal cover.
Yeah, to the fake elector scheme.
We're giving you a reason correct.
And it's all there. I I you know,
Vaughn when we talk about
the the ways in which this is an effort on
the part of the AG not just to seek accountability
for what happened in 2020 but to
I think in ensure against future or fraudulent election behavior.
You pointed this out in a conversation with my colleague
Chris Hayes last hour that you know some of these
people who have been indicted are still very much involved
with air the Arizona election infrastructure.
Can you talk a little bit more about that
right now? Let's use Tyler Boyer as an example.
Tyler Boyer is not going to be a household name
to most folks,
but he is the RNC committee man from Arizona.
So he is the one that at every RNC meeting,
winter meeting, summer meeting, he's the one that has a
vote for Arizona picks the chair of the party for
example.
He is the person who is not only one of
these fake electors indicted but also RNC committee meant.
But he's also the Chief Operating Officer of Turning Point
USA,
which is the Charlie Kirk Organization,
the Trump aligned organization that has garnered millions of dollars
and has effectively taken over the Arizona Republican Party in
recent years.
Tyler Boyer, Charlie Kirk. They're close with the likes of
Carrie Lake,
Abe Homaday, who was the opponent to Chris Mays in
the Attorney General's race in
2022 and was an election denier.
And there has been a lot of frustration in the
Republican Party
from some folks who have been around the Republican Party
for a while with individuals like Tyler Lawyer and it's
Kelly Layton,
Kelly Ward as well, who came in and sort of
had this revolution right.
They ousted the likes of John McCain.
They ousted Jeff Flake. Kelly Ward ran against Jeff Flake
for the US Senate and the Republican primary
and Jeff Flake dropped out because he was losing in
polling to Kelly Ward. And so all of these years
later,
these folks effectively took over.
The party are still effectively running the party.
Their allies are the ones running for office here,
and there is little in Kerry Lakes Senate run here
in
2024 as evidence of this.
It's the same allies of these very individuals that were
naming in this indictment here
along with folks like Boris Epstein who is also an
indicted in this who is continues to be the lead
council advisor legal advisor for Donald
Trump's 2024 campaign. All of these folks are still very
much in the game.
So it's not just a matter of
2020 as a bygone era making good on trying to
bring justice to past actions,
but these are folks that are still intimately involved with
what is happening over the next seven months,
six months of the head of the
2024 election. Just to that end,
Lisa, what do you foresee as the sort of handshake
between the Georgia case and the Arizona case,
given the overlapping defendants and both?
I mean, the fact that Jenna Ellis has you pleaded
out in Georgia,
does that suggest to you that she's going to plead
out here?
I mean, what can we map from Georgia on to
Arizona?
It's difficult to say because the facts are different and
some of the communications also are
very different. One thing that strikes me though is who
isn't here?
And that's obviously the former president of the United States
who's not a defendant here.
And that leaves many people scratching
their heads as to why not.
I'll venture one guess on Thursday.
That's tomorrow the United States Supreme Court is going to
hear Trump's presidential immunity argument.
He has made presidential immunity arguments not only in the
federal election interference case,
but also in the Georgia case,
also in the Florida case.
One reason that Chris Mays may not have indicted Donald
Trump here is because she wants to see how that
plays itself out first,
and also give some of those indicted a chance to
flip against the bus.
Just when you think there the screw had has turned
all the ways at Cannes,
there is another turn of the screw.