Arizona Grand Jury Indicts Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows & 16 Other Trump Allies For Attempts To Overturn His 2020 Election Loss

On Wednesday, an Arizona grand jury indicted 18 of Donald Trump’s allies for trying to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state.

Boris Epshteyn, a former White House aide who has remained one of Trump’s closest advisers, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows are three of 18 indicted allies. Their names were redacted in documents released, but court officials confirmed that they were included in the group charged.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) announced the indictment Wednesday night. She focused on the 11 people who acted as pro-Trump electors in Arizona.

“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,” Mayes stated. 

“These are serious indictments, but this is the first hurdle the state must pass in our constitutional criminal justice system,” she declared. “We intend to prove these crimes were committed beyond a reasonable doubt. However, it must be remembered that the defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law and convicted by a jury of their peers. Though it is important to tell Arizonans about the grand jury indictments against these defendants.”

“Our office will continue its investigation into the efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election illegally,” the Arizona attorney general confirmed.

Details within the indictment suggest that Trump is “Unindicted Coconspirator 1.”

The indictment in Arizona contains nine counts, from conspiracy and forgery to participating in fraudulent schemes. 

The indictment states, “In Arizona and the United States, the people elected Joseph Biden as President on November 3, 2020. Unwilling to accept this fact, [the] Defendants and unindicted coconspirators schemed to prevent the lawful transfer of the presidency to keep Unindicted Coconspirator 1 in office against the will of Arizona’s voters.”

“[The] 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,” the indictment says. “In reality, [the] Defendants intended that their false votes for Trump-Pence would encourage Pence to reject the Biden-[Kamala Harris] votes on January 6, 2021, regardless of the outcome of the legal challenge.”

The indictment mentions that the scheme failed on January 6, 2021, when then-Vice President Mike Pence accepted Biden’s electoral votes.

Epshteyn has not been charged before with 2020 post-election attempts to reverse Trump’s loss. 

As a legal adviser to Trump, the former White House aide speaks to the former president regularly during specific stretches, often many times a day. 

He has been widely considered one of Trump’s most fiercely loyal advisers since joining his 2016 campaign.

While the names of several defendants in the Arizona case are still redacted since they have not been served yet, the indictment describes their roles in the scheme.

The person who CNN identified as Giuliani is described as circulating false claims of voter fraud across America after the 2020 election, falsely claiming Arizona officials hardly tried to figure out if the vote was accurate. 

The indictment also described this person as encouraging “Republican electors in Arizona and in six other contested states to vote for Trump-Pence on December 14, 2020.”

A grand jury empaneled in Maricopa County, Arizona, to investigate attempts to overturn the 2020 election results had met this week before Mayes announced the charges.

Mayes initially focused her investigation on the 11 false electors from Arizona and those who helped organize them.

Several state-level officials from Arizona told the House Select Committee that investigated the Capitol riot that Trump and his allies urged them to invalidate the state’s election results.

In December 2023, a federal appeals court ruled Meadows would have to stand trial in Atlanta for his efforts to overturn Georgia’s election results. While he could appeal his ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, the case is moving forward in Fulton County.

He attempted to move his Georgia election interference case out of state court.

Meadows believed he would get a more favorable jury pool in federal court and claimed that his role as chief of staff allowed him to do nearly anything on Trump’s behalf.

Chief Judge William Pryor and Circuit Judges Robin Rosenbaum and Nancy Abudu rejected his appeal.

Trump attorneys Juli Haller, Lawrence Joseph and Brandon Johnson, who helped Trump lawyer Sidney Powell’s campaign in mounting legal challenges to the 2020 election results, have been charged by bar investigators in Washington, D.C. They were accused of violating disciplinary policies and have been facing disciplinary charges.

These three lawyers were accused of deliberately misleading courts in many lawsuits they filed weeks after the 2020 election. The filings had been publicly revealed in January.