We've got to get to some breaking news happening right now. Arizona Attorney General, Chris May is just announcing charges against Arizona's so called fake electors including state lawmakers and the former head of the state Republican Party. Joining me right now is 12 news political analyst, Bram Resnick Graham. These are huge charges. This is a bombshell. We've been waiting a year for this investigation by Chris Mays Attorney General, Chris to conclude and now we have the results of that investigation. All 11 fake electors have been charged with nine felonies of peach. A piece of very serious crimes including conspiracy, fraudulent schemes and forgery. Top of the list. Kelly Ward, the former chair of the Arizona Republican Party, two sitting lawmakers, state Senator Jay Kaufman, state Senator Anthony Kern, um former US Senate candidate Jim Lehman. They were all part of the 11 fake electors who met about a month after the 2020 election and signed a certificate claiming they were the actual Trump electors here in Arizona. They were the rightful electors even though Joe Biden won the Arizona election. This happened in six other states. Arizona is the last state to take legal action in involving this. Um And the bottom line on this scheme was the Trump campaign's effort to overturn Joe Biden's victory. Millions of voters could have been disenfranchised if it had worked. Chris May sent along a recorded video. Let's take a listen. Arizona's election was free and fair. The people of Arizona elected President Biden unwilling to accept this fact. The defendants charged by the state grand jury allegedly schemed to prevent the lawful transfer of the presidency. Whatever their reasoning was, the plot to violate the law must be answered for. And I was elected to uphold the law of this state. The scheme had it succeeded would have deprived Arizona's voters of their right to have their votes counted for their chosen president. It effectively would have made their right to vote meaningless. And I wanna know you heard what Chris May said uh over the course of the last several months, folks in her office have said we are not charging people unless we are certain the charges will result in a conviction. They weren't fooling around. They weren't just gonna throw charges at the wall and see if they stuck. We're only gonna charge people if we are certain of their conviction that should send a chill down the spines of all of these folks who have been indicted. I should add, there are seven more indictments. The names were redacted from the indictments we received. Uh They have not yet been served. It appears So in all 18 people indicted in the fake elector scheme here in Arizona after the 2020 presidential election, I wanna get to some of these names that just came down. Uh It was announced that as you mentioned, Kelly Ward, the head of the Republican Party, Tyler Bauer Boyer. Pardon me, Nancy Coddle James Lehman, Robert Montgomery, Samuel Moorhead, Lorraine Pellegrino Gregory Safin and Michael Ward. Uh it turns out that Arizona lawmakers, Anthony Kern and Jacob Hoffman and are also among the defendants listed in this indictment as well. Talk about how serious this was and, and truly give us, you know, for those who may not be as familiar, um talk about the background of what led up to this. Well, again, this was, this happened after the, the election in November of 2020 Donald Trump lost and a group came together around him. The ringleader, the architect of the fake fake elector scheme is a man named Ken Chesbrough. If you've been following the reporter on reports on investigations in other states, specifically, Georgia Chesbrough was indicted there. He took a plea deal to a felony in exchange for his testimony. He has spoken with Arizona investigators. I've reviewed much of what's been reported over the last last year and it is clear Chesbrough with his emails, other documents laid a paper trail to help Arizona investigators figure out exactly how this came together. Now, all of these folks, most if not all of these folks who have been indicted were called in to speak with the grand jury. We don't know what happened there. We don't know what kind of information Chris May's team got during the course of their investigation, but clearly it was enough to file charges against 1818 people. Nine felonies. Yeah, that, that is a lot. And this comes, you mentioned, you know, Arizona was among one of a number of states. Uh Michigan, it just came down that Michigan prosecutors also uh considered the former president and some of his top aides, co-conspirators in the plot to falsely claim that they had won. You know, Michigan's 20. So what happened? The Trump campaign took on seven battleground states. They thought they needed to flip some or all of them in order to take the election from Joe Biden, basically steal the election. Arizona was one of those states. Arizona was central. The idea was to put out these phony electors as real electors, send them to Washington DC. And when it came time for vice president Mike Pence to read the names of the electors from each state, there would be confusion. You'd have a list of Biden electors and a phony slate of Trump electors. What would Pence do? Never got to that point. The insurrection interrupted it and just at that moment when it came time for Arizona to be announced, suddenly the Capitol attack had begun, got too close. That was the center of attention to the house. Exactly. Well, I know that just a couple of moments ago, we also just heard from our Governor Katie Hobbs who spoke about this situation. Let's listen in to what she had to say. Uh, since the 2020 election when I was Secretary of State, I have continued to say that anyone involved with election interference with trying to overturn the will of the voters should be held accountable. Um This is one more step in that and I'm glad to see it and clearly, it looks as though they were definitely held accountable with these indictments. So you may have heard me take a breath there. I don't know if you folks heard that on air. The Washington Post is reporting that among those seven other indictments are former Trump top Trump officials. Let me read them to you, Trump White House, Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows attorneys, Rudy Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis John Eastman and Christina Bob, top campaign adviser, Boris Epstein, and former campaign aide Mike Roman in reading the documents, the emails, the back and forth. They are all part of those strings. You see these names coming up and Rudy Giuliani, it appears some documents I've read played a very central role as kind of a clearing house for what was going on questions people may have had. There's 11 statement from Kelly Ward that's unforgettable where she apparently had concerns. I'm using words from this email. Kelly ward, the former chair of the Arizona Republican Party had concerns that what they were doing was treasonous. Now, treason is a federal crime. It is not charged in this document. Among the charges are forgery, fraud. Those are the most serious ones, forgery, obviously, because they signed their names to a phony document. Let's look ahead if we can. How is this going to affect, come November affect Arizona battleground state? What do you think? How do you think this is going to shake out? Once again, we're just in a, a brand new world here. We have these indictments being handed down in the midst of the election. Now, Chris Mays told reporters she was very aware of what was going on how the election was proceeding. Did not wanna wait too long to hand down these indictments. Um It's unclear you have two lawmakers running for office. Jake Hoffman is trying to get his seat back in the State Senate. Anthony Kern is running for Congress in the eighth congressional district, two of those candidates. Uh The others are just, I guess doing their thing. You have all these Trump campaign officials, many of whom are already ensnared in an investigations in other states like Michigan, as we had just mentioned, Michigan. Yeah, the Georgia investigation and trials are are, you know, hasn't started. Yeah, but that's, that's still in progress in Wisconsin. You had a civil lawsuit settled. Um, so things are still in motion in the run up to November, I can't tell you for sure. But with this many, uh, defendants, uh, chances are this is gonna go well past the election also don't rule out the likelihood of plea deals by many of them. We just want this to go away. One significant reason being charged like this is very expensive. The lawyers are very expensive. In fact, Tyler Boyer, who was a Republican national committeeman tried to get the Republican National committee to pay the legal fees of these electors. That didn't happen. We'll see if the RNC takes action now, but the first attempt didn't work and all of this, of course, happening while Trump is on trial for the hush money, uh, charges three more trials. Right. Right. In the works. Ok. Well, I know you're gonna have much more coming up at 56 and 10 as well. So I'm gonna let you back to all your research and as this story develops, you know, we're getting more and more information. Bram. Thanks so much for your insights.
