The allegations relate to their alleged efforts to undermine President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
A grand jury in the state of Arizona has indicted Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, lawyer Rudy Giuliani and 16 others for their alleged roles in trying to overturn the former US president’s defeat in the 2020 election.
The indictment released late Wednesday by the attorney general names 11 Republicans who submitted a document to Congress falsely declaring that Trump won the key state in 2020.
They include the state’s former party chairman, a 2022 U.S. Senate candidate and two sitting state lawmakers. They are each charged with nine counts of conspiracy, fraud and forgery.
The identities of the seven others, including Giuliani and Meadows, were redacted by the attorney general because they had not yet been formally served with the documents, but they were easily identifiable from their descriptions.
The indictment mentions chief of staff in 2020, the position Meadows held in the Trump White House at the time.
Trump himself was not indicted, but was described as an unindicted co-conspirator.
The charges came after a year-long investigation by Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, into Republicans’ handling of the election in the key swing state, which President Joe Biden won by just 10,457 votes in 2020.
The southwestern state is now the fourth, after Michigan, Georgia and Nevada, to bring charges against Trump allies who made false or unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud.
“I will not allow American democracy to be undermined,” Mayes said in a video released by her office. “It’s too important.”
But Trump and his supporters continue to level allegations against Biden’s victory in the 2020 election as the former president prepares to face the Democratic incumbent again in the November election.
George Terwilliger, an attorney representing Meadows, said he has not yet seen the indictment, but if Meadows is named, “it is a blatantly political and politicized allegation and will be contested and dismissed.”
Ted Goodman, a spokesman for Giuliani, responded: “The continued weaponization of our justice system should concern every American because it causes lasting, irreversible harm to the country.”
Trump himself was indicted in four criminal cases. The first went on trial in New York this month. It’s about alleged “hush money” payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels to buy her silence after she alleged a sexual encounter with Trump, which he has denied. He is accused of falsifying business records to cover up payments before the 2016 presidential election.
The former president was also indicted in federal court in August over his efforts to stay in power after his defeat in the 2020 election. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments Thursday on Trump’s claim in the case that he cannot be prosecuted for acts he committed while he was president.
The other two charges are an election interference case in the state of Georgia and a federal case in Florida involving misuse of confidential documents.