The Arizona Grand Jury that 18 Republican supporters charged Former President Donald Trump, who falsely claimed he won the state in the 2020 election, also wanted to consider charging Trump, but prosecutors urged them not to, according to court documents filed this week.
Court records filed by Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes’ office contain exchanges between prosecutors and grand jurors, who heard 18 days of testimony.
As grand jurors were considering possible chargesA prosecutor asked them not to charge Trump, citing a Justice Department policy that limits the ability to prosecute someone for the same crime twice, and gave a PowerPoint presentation about that policy. The prosecutor, who is not identified in the records, also did not know whether authorities had all the evidence they would need to charge Trump at that time.
“I know this may be disappointing to some of you,” the prosecutor said. “I understand.”
Ultimately, the grand jury 18 people charged on charges of forgery, fraud and conspiracy, including the 11 Republicans who submitted a document falsely claiming Trump had won Arizona, five lawyers with ties to Trump and two former Trump aides.
Although Trump has not been charged in the Arizona case, the indictment calls him an “unindicted co-conspirator.” The former president is indicted in federal case led by special prosecutor Jack Smith with the aim of overturning the 2020 presidential election.
Jason Lamm, a former prosecutor who now works as a criminal defense attorney in Phoenix, said Mayes’ office is not bound by Justice Department policy.
“It was a choice, rather than an obligation,” Lamm said of prosecutors asking grand jurors not to indict Trump.
Lamm, who does not represent any of the defendants in the case, said that even if Trump had been indicted and Mayes’ office had not wanted to prosecute him, “there would have been other ways to resolve the case rather than potentially infringing on the grand jury’s autonomy.”
The filing by Arizona prosecutors also revealed that they asked grand jurors not to bring charges against a group of Republican state lawmakers for signing a document urging then-Vice President Mike Pence to accept fake Electoral College certificates from Arizona’s fake electors.
When grand jurors asked whether to indict the 22 sitting Republican lawmakers and eight others who won elections but had not yet taken office, the prosecutor was cautious about proving intent to defraud on the part of all the lawmakers who signed the document.
Earlier this week, attorney Jenna Ellis signed a deal with Arizona prosecutors that will drop charges against her in exchange for her cooperation. She pleaded guilty in Georgia last year to one count of trying to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in that state.
Additionally, Republican activist Loraine Pellegrino, who signed the document falsely claiming that Trump had won Arizona, has become the first person to be convicted in the state’s fake voter registration case. Prosecutors say she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of filing a false document.
The other defendants, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Trump’s presidential chief of staff, Mark Meadows, have pleaded not guilty.
Eleven people designated as Arizona Republican electors gathered in Phoenix on December 14, 2020, to sign a certificate stating that they were “duly elected and qualified” electors and affirming that Trump had won the state in the 2020 election. President Joe Biden won Arizona by 10,457 votes. A one-minute video of the signing ceremony was posted on social media by the Arizona Republican Party at the time. The document was later sent to Congress and the National Archives, where it was ignored.
Attorneys from Michigan, Nevada, Georgia and Wisconsin also filed criminal charges in connection with the fake voter scheme. Arizona authorities unveiled the criminal charges in late April.
The grand jury excerpts were contained in a document in which prosecutors responded to requests by some defendants to drop their charges.
Defense attorneys argued that their clients’ actions were based on their constitutionally protected right to free speech. They also accused the Arizona attorney general’s office of bias against the defendants.
In their response, prosecutors said grand jurors are independent and have the discretion to decide whether to bring charges against an individual.
During one exchange, a grand juror asked an investigator whether Mayes or any member of his team wanted a specific outcome from the investigation. “Absolutely not,” the investigator replied.
