(AFP) – Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and 10 others denied charges in Arizona on Tuesday that they were involved in a plot to subvert the 2020 presidential election won by Joe Biden.
Giuliani, who appeared by video link, was ordered to post a $10,000 surety after spending weeks evading efforts to serve him with a summons and even taunting prosecutors on social media. He was finally served on Friday night in Florida at a party being thrown in honor of his 80th birthday, CNN reported.
The indictment says former New York mayor Giuliani spread misinformation about election fraud in Arizona in 2020 and pressured elected officials to change the outcome of the election. It says he also encouraged Republican electors in Arizona and other states to declare Trump had won the ballot, when he had not.
Among others appearing Tuesday were nine alleged “fake electors” — people the prosecution says claimed to be legitimately empaneled to represent a non-existent Trump win in Arizona. When Congress reconvened after the violent attack on the Capitol on January 6, it ultimately ignored Arizona’s fake electors and certified the genuine results, officially sending Biden to the White House.
Tuesday’s brief appearances came days after John Eastman, the lawyer behind the alleged conspiracy, made his first appearance in court. Eastman pleaded not guilty to nine counts including conspiracy, forgery, and fraud. A total of 18 people are charged in Arizona. Others include one-time Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, attorney Jenna Ellis, and campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn.
Biden won Arizona, a critical election battleground, by just over 10,000 votes, but many Republican Party officials insisted — without evidence — that there had been fraud and that Trump had been the real winner.
Arizona is the fourth state to seek charges against people who tried to form an alternative slate of electors, after Michigan, Georgia, and Nevada. Meadows, Giuliani, Ellis, and Eastman have all been charged in Georgia, alongside Trump in what is probably the most explosive of the four criminal trials he faces.
As a swing state and something of a ground zero for election conspiracy theories peddled by right-wing Republicans, Arizona is once again expected to be closely contested this November when Americans head to the polls. – Huw GRIFFITH
© 2024 AFP
