Charges against Trump’s 2020 ‘fake electors’ are expected to deter a repeat this year

An Arizona grand jury’s indictment of 18 people who impersonated or helped organize a series of voters who falsely claimed former President Donald Trump won the state in 2020 could change the landscape of challenges to the 2024 election can help shape it.

The indictment issued Wednesday is part of a campaign to prevent a repeat of 2020, when Trump and his allies falsely claimed he won swing states and filed dozens of lawsuits unsuccessfully challenging Biden’s victory and tried to get Congress to let Trump stay in power. That campaign culminated in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The penalties piling up for this attempt include lawyers who helped Trump get disbarred, censured and sanctioned. On top of that are millions of dollars in defamation and now criminal charges in four states for spreading lies about the 2020 election. That effort included submitting so-called fake electors claiming that Trump had actually won the states and that it Congress should recognize them instead of the voters won by President Joe Biden.

“People are going to have to think twice about things that could undermine the election,” said David Becker, founder of the Center for Election Innovation. & Researcher and co-author of ‘The Big Truth’, about the danger of election deniers in 2020. “The deterrent effect is real.”

Trump himself is facing federal charges for his attempt to overturn the election, as well as a separate suit by Fulton County, Georgia. On Thursday, the Supreme Court heard arguments on Trump’s claim that he should be immune from prosecution for his actions while president. Although the justices were poised to reject that claim, several justices raised concerns about the federal charges that could delay the case until after the November election.

Justin Levitt, a former Justice Department official who also worked in the Biden White House, noted the varying pace of fallout for Trump and those he called the former president’s “lieutenants” in the challenges to the 2020 election results.

“One of the things that drives deterrence the most is speed and severity,” Levitt said. “While the wheels of justice turn slowly, they do turn, and we see consequences for the lieutenants in this conspiracy.”

The biggest fallout may have been the indictments of so-called fake voters in Arizona, Michigan and Nevada, all states with Democratic attorneys general. Several people targeted in the sweeping indictment against Georgia were also charged in connection with a false election campaign.

The 18 people charged in Arizona include Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Christina Bobb, a lawyer recently named the Republican National Committee’s chief of election integrity. Trump was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator.

“This is not some kind of game. This is not some fantasy football league,” Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state, said in an interview Thursday. “This is real life and bad actions have real potential bad consequences. .”

The scope of the indictment against Arizona, announced by Attorney General Kris Mayes, drew sharp criticism from some out-of-state defendants.

“The phenomenon of partisan ‘litigation’ is becoming more disturbing by the day,” said Charles Burnham, an attorney for attorney John Eastman, who advised Trump on his 2020 legal battle and faces possible disbarment in California and more criminal charges in Georgia.

It comes after indictments against 16 alleged Trump voters who claimed their candidate won Michigan, the six in Nevada and three in the Fulton County case in Georgia.

In a speech in Georgia earlier this year, Eastman noted how Wisconsin’s fake Trump voters had to agree that Biden won the state and pledge not to serve as electors in 2024 as a condition of settling a civil lawsuit brought by two Democrats had filed. He portrayed it as part of a sweeping effort to quash dissent over the 2020 election — even as reviews, recounts and audits in all the swing states where Trump contested his loss all confirmed Biden’s victory.

“The government has spoken, so if you don’t bend the knee, we’re going to destroy you,” Eastman said.

Prosecutors have a different view of their case.

“As we prepare for the 2024 presidential election, today’s indictments are the first in an ongoing effort to not only seek justice for the mistakes of the past, but to ensure they do not happen again,” said Attorney General Gen. Dana Nessel of Michigan said in a statement. last year when her office filed charges.

In addition to the charges, Congress has taken an important step in cutting off further opportunities for electoral mischief. A bipartisan bill signed by Biden in 2022 makes it harder to submit rival voter rolls, requiring only those certified by a state’s governor to go to Congress for certification.

“The option of alternative voters has diminished incredibly,” said Edward B. Foley, a law professor at Ohio State University.

The 65 Project is an organization created to pursue legal discipline against attorneys involved in filing the dozens of failed lawsuits challenging Trump’s 2020 loss. Michael Teter, director of the group, said the threat has already had an impact due to declining enthusiasm among election deniers for lawsuits challenging their many losses in the 2022 election.

“I don’t think we’ll see the same kind of efforts to use the justice system in 2024,” Teter said, adding that he expects Trump to challenge the results if he loses in the election. “But I don’t think they will use the legal system in the same way and I don’t think they will use a system like the fake voter.

“I don’t think many people will want to sign up for that again.”

___

Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti in Lansing, Michigan, and Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix contributed to this report.