The Arizona Supreme Court has rejected the state's attempt to move forward with a high-profile case against Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani and others accused of participating in a fake elector scheme tied to the 2020 presidential election. The ruling orders the case back to a grand jury, handing another courtroom loss to Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes.
Mayes' office said it plans to re-present the entire case to a fresh grand jury rather than abandon the prosecution. The decision underscores the mounting legal obstacles facing the sprawling case as it winds through Arizona courts.
A Phoenix judge had previously determined that the original grand jury never received a copy of the Electoral Count Act, a 19th-century federal law governing how states certify presidential election results. The law became central to the defense strategy, with attorneys arguing it permitted multiple slates of electors to be submitted to Congress if results were in dispute.
The Electoral Count Act was amended in 2022 to clarify that only one slate of electors per state could be submitted and that the state governor alone held authority to sign off on the election certification. That amendment was cited by those charged in their legal arguments about what conduct was lawful at the time of the alleged scheme.
Arizona is one of three states still pursuing cases connected to the fake elector effort. Nevada and Wisconsin have similar cases pending. By contrast, courts dismissed comparable prosecutions in Michigan and Georgia, and a special prosecutor dropped the federal case against Trump in late 2024 that involved conspiracy charges related to overturning the 2020 election results.
No progress has occurred in the Arizona case at the trial court level since May, when the grand jury issue surfaced. Biden carried Arizona in 2020 by roughly 10,400 votes.
Author James Rodriguez: "Mayes keeps swinging and keeps missing, which raises real questions about whether this case has any viable path forward."
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