The news outlet POLITICO reported in recent days that new developments indicate the expansion of a criminal probe run by state authorities in Arizona that’s examining efforts in the state targeting its presidential election results from 2020.
Per the outlet, investigators issued subpoenas targeting individuals connected to that year’s presidential campaign that sought to send Trump back for another four years… which infamously spiraled into the then-incumbent crusading against the national win by his opponent despite the extensive documentation of its legitimacy. Arizona was narrowly won by now President Joe Biden that year, and it was among the states where allies to Donald Trump assembled a slate of claimed electoral votes despite the Democrat winning the jurisdiction.
The sham elector efforts already led to criminal charges in Georgia, Michigan, and Nevada, sometimes implicating high-profile political figures like a former chairman of the state GOP in Georgia and the current chairman of Nevada’s state Republican Party. Kenneth Chesebro, a lawyer closely connected to the sham elector efforts, pleaded guilty to criminal allegations he was facing in the Georgia case, subsequently agreeing to cooperate with investigators in other states looking into related matters. That list includes Arizona.
The POLITICO report says that Trump himself has been a subject of questions amid the Arizona investigation. Arizona voters replaced Republican Mark Brnovich with Democrat Kris Mayes as state Attorney General in the midterm elections in 2022, forcing more of a lag to the investigation touching on the Trump camp’s ambitions in the state.
Trump, meanwhile, is still facing a federal criminal case of his own related to his alleged role in criminal undertakings targeting the election results from 2020, and he’s also charged in the same Georgia case that ensnared individuals involved there in elector schemes. The federal case is awaiting arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court on claims from Trump of wide-reaching legal protections by virtue of once serving as president that supposedly should stop the case. He characterizes his efforts after the 2020 election as part of his responsibilities as president.
