Fifty-three Trump Allies Have Been Charged Over His Attempt To Steal Th
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Number of Trump Allies Facing Election Interference Charges Keeps Growing
Prosecutors are sending a warning as Donald Trump and his supporters
continue to spread conspiracy theories: that disrupting elections can bear
a heavy legal cost.
Rudolph W. Giuliani, Donald J. Trump’s former personal lawyer, faces
charges in Georgia and Arizona. Credit...Kendrick Brinson for The New York Times
Danny HakimRichard Fausset
By Danny Hakim and Richard Fausset
Danny Hakim and Richard Fausset report on state elections prosecutions.
April 26, 2024, 9:07 a.m. ET
Fifty-three people who tried to keep former President Donald J. Trump in
power after he lost the 2020 election have now been criminally charged.
The indictments have been brought in four swing states that will be crucial
to the upcoming election, most recently on Wednesday in Arizona, where Kris Mayes, the Democratic attorney general, said that she could “not allow
American democracy to be undermined.” The message she and other prosecutors
are sending represents a warning as Mr. Trump and his supporters continue
to spread election conspiracy theories ahead of another presidential
contest: that disrupting elections can bear a heavy legal cost.
Mr. Trump’s own legal complications are also growing. On Wednesday, he was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in election interference
investigations in both Arizona and Michigan. He has already been charged in Georgia while facing two federal prosecutions and a criminal trial in
Manhattan related to hush money payments made to a porn star.
What’s more, Mr. Trump’s top legal strategist, Boris Epshteyn, was indicted
in Arizona on Wednesday.
There remains a possibility that Mr. Trump’s aides and allies will be put
on trial for manipulating an election on his behalf, while he is not. If he
is re-elected president in November, the federal courts, or even Congress, could shield him from having to face trial in the Georgia election
interference case, at least while he is in office, on the grounds that a president sitting in an Atlanta courtroom for weeks or months would be
unable to carry out his constitutional duties.
He could also use his executive powers to halt the two federal cases
against him.
“I assume, should these constitutional concerns about putting Trump on
trial while president play out, there would be efforts to sever the other defendants, and no reason for the trials as to those defendants not to proceed,” said Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor and a law
professor at Columbia University.
Image
Kris Mayes, Arizona’s Democratic attorney general, charged all 11 fake
Arizona electors and seven Trump advisers.Credit...Rebecca Noble/Reuters Democrats are leading all of the state prosecutions, though they have moved slowly. None of the cases are likely to come to trial before the election,
a reality that has frustrated many on the left. While Fani T. Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., has been investigating since early 2021, her racketeering case has been slowed by its scope and complexity,
and by efforts to disqualify her.
Ms. Willis brought charges last August against Mr. Trump and 18 of his
allies and advisers, laying out a number of ways she said they had
conspired to overturn the former president’s 2020 election loss in the
state.
Cases in Michigan and Nevada have focused solely on the Republicans whom
the Trump campaign deployed as fake electors in those states. Having slates
of people claiming to be electors for Mr. Trump was an integral part of the effort to keep him in office after his loss at the polls in 2020.
Ms. Mayes charged all 11 people who served as fake Arizona electors, and
seven Trump advisers. Four of those advisers now face charges in both
Georgia and Arizona: Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s former personal
lawyer; Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff; Mike Roman, a former Trump campaign operative who played a leading role in the fake
electors scheme; and John Eastman, a legal architect of the elector plan.
Jenna Ellis, a former Trump lawyer who had been one of his staunchest defenders, was also charged in both states; she pleaded guilty to a felony
last year in Georgia. During a tearful court appearance in Atlanta, she
said, “If I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump.”
Republican leaders, however, have been defiant in the face of the
prosecutions. “We will not be deterred by this overreach,” the Arizona
G.O.P. said in a statement Wednesday after a grand jury had handed up the charges, echoing the stances of leaders in other states.
Josh McKoon, chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, said in an interview that “I don’t think that this is going to discourage the base of the
Republican Party from engaging in politics,” adding, “I think what it
actually does is it heightens, to an entirely new level, the importance of winning the 2024 election.”
But a number of those who have been indicted are lawyers, which may give
pause to lawyers advising the current Trump campaign.
“There will be more caution on the part of the lawyers,” said Manny Arora,
who represents Kenneth Chesebro, another legal architect of the fake
elector plot. Mr. Chesebro, who pleaded guilty to a felony in Georgia, has emerged as a key witness in all of the state inquiries, including one in Wisconsin, which has not yet led to charges.
Image
Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, faces election interference charges in Georgia and Arizona. Credit...Al Drago for The New
York Times
“While we all agree that there’s no chance in the world the cases will be resolved prior to the election,” Mr. Arora said, “it would be nice to have
the cases resolved so we can have some clear guidance as to what does and
what doesn’t cross the line.”
No evidence has emerged to support Mr. Trump’s stolen election claims. The defense teams in the state election cases are generally not challenging the evidence prosecutors have put forth, instead making arguments on First Amendment or procedural grounds.
If nothing else, the cases have created divisions among the many
defendants.
Some have renounced what took place after the 2020 election; others,
including state-level party leaders who acted as Trump electors, have dug
in.
Some of the fake electors were local party activists, like James Renner, a Michigan state trooper; charges against him were dropped after he reached a cooperation agreement last year. He expressed regret at what had taken
place, telling state investigators that he “felt that I had been walked
into a situation that I shouldn’t have ever been involved in.”
Nick Somberg, a Republican congressional candidate in Michigan, is
representing Meshawn Maddock, a former co-chairwoman of the Michigan
Republican Party, who is among those charged. In a social media post that recently surfaced, Mr. Somberg referred to Mr. Renner as the state’s “star snitch.”
That led Kristen D. Simmons, the judge presiding over pretrial hearings in Michigan, to issue a warning this week, saying she did not want “to be
taking time away from my judicial duties to address comments made on
Facebook posts.”
She added, “It’s juvenile, and it’s ridiculous.”
Mr. Somberg defended his comments in an interview and said he worried about
the chilling effects of the case. “Are people going to be so outspoken,
seeing what happened to these Republicans?” he said.
But he added, “I don’t think the election was stolen.”
Alexandra Berzon and Nick Corasaniti contributed reporting.
Danny Hakim is a reporter on the Investigations team at The Times, focused primarily on politics. More about Danny Hakim
Richard Fausset, based in Atlanta, writes about the American South,
focusing on politics, culture, race, poverty and criminal justice. More
about Richard Fausset
The number of Trump allies facing election interference charges keeps growing, and prosecutors are sending a warning as Donald Trump and his supporters continue to spread conspiracy theories: that disrupting
elections can bear a heavy legal cost.
Trump has vowed to “cancel” President Biden’s policies for cutting pollution from fossil-fuel-burning power plants, “terminate” efforts to encourage electric vehicles, and “develop the liquid gold that is right
under our feet” by promoting oil and gas.
A campaign watchdog group filed a formal complaint to the Federal
Election Commission accusing Trump’s presidential campaign and related political committees of concealing payments of $7.2 million in legal fees
in violation of campaign finance law.
Other Key Races
Scott Perry, the House Freedom Caucus stalwart and 2020 election
denier, is confronting a general election challenge in a central
Pennsylvania district that has grown more competitive.
With the 2024 primary season entering the homestretch — and the presidential matchup already set — hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians
cast their ballots in Senate and House contests as well as for president
and local races. Here are the takeaways.
David McCormick won an unopposed Republican primary for Senate in Pennsylvania, securing the party’s nomination two years after former Trump torpedoed his first Senate run by backing his primary rival, the celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz.
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From
68hx.1806@21:1/5 to
Clay Pigeons on Sat Apr 27 00:43:30 2024
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On 4/26/24 8:00 PM, Clay Pigeons wrote:
On 4/26/2024 10:53 AM, Rudy Canoza wrote:
On 4/26/2024 10:28 AM, Paul Szypula wrote:
Number of Trump Allies Facing Election Interference Charges Keeps
Growing
Prosecutors are sending a warning as Donald Trump and his supporters
continue to spread conspiracy theories: that disrupting elections can
bear
a heavy legal cost.
Rudolph W. Giuliani, Donald J. Trump’s former personal lawyer, faces
charges in Georgia and Arizona. Credit...Kendrick Brinson for The New
York
Times
Danny HakimRichard Fausset
By Danny Hakim and Richard Fausset
Danny Hakim and Richard Fausset report on state elections prosecutions.
April 26, 2024, 9:07 a.m. ET
Trump's meritless lawsuits
Like those meritless charges that Alvin Bragg preferred.
This is all Pol-War ... more or less Politics As Usual.
Nothing historic here. For the USA this is an 'uptick'
in the level and scope, but still not THAT unusual.
Check into the 1800s particularly, but even the events
surrounding Nixon were still the same thing. Smears
and persecutions/prosecutions and special ball-busting
little laws/regs .... all part of the package, all
intended to get-at/suppress 'Them'.
It all DID get out of hand in 1860 alas ... but that
specific result can't happen again because of so
much population mixing.
So, it's worth noting, complaining, but don't act like
we've never seen anything like this.
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