From The Washington Post:
An Arizona grand jury on Wednesday indicted seven attorneys or aides affiliated with Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign as well as 11 Arizona Republicans on felony charges related to their alleged efforts to subvert Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state, according to an announcement by the state attorney general.
Those indicted include former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman and Christina Bobb, top campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn and former campaign aide Mike Roman. They are accused of allegedly aiding an unsuccessful strategy to award the state’s electoral votes to Trump instead of Biden after the 2020 election. Also charged are the Republicans who signed paperwork on Dec. 14, 2020, that falsely purported Trump was the rightful winner, including former state party chair Kelli Ward, state Sens. Jake Hoffman and Anthony Kern, and Tyler Bowyer, a GOP national committeeman and chief operating officer of Turning Point Action, the campaign arm of the pro-Trump conservative group Turning Point USA.
Readers of this blog will recall the Pennsylvania connections to some of the above indicted.
We'll be looking at some of the Pennsylvania mentions in this Arizona Indictment.
Digging through it, I found this:
During a conference call on December 12, 2020, a Pennsylvania attorney expressed concern that the certificate of vote falsely claimed that the Republican electors were the "duly elected and certified electors." He requested adding language to the certificates indicating that the Trump-Pence electors' votes were contingent on being certified the duly elected and qualified electors. (p. 41)
Looking forward to finding out who that "Pennsylvania attorney" was.
After a brief discussion about that contingency, there's this:
Pennsylvania insisted on the language. Unindicted Coconspirator 4 prepared a draft and sent [REDACTED] and Findlay the following email on December 13, 2020:
Mike, here is my suggested language for dealing with the concern raised in the PA conference call about Electors possibly facing legal exposure (at the hands of a partisan AG} if they seem to certify that they are currently the valid Electors.
Easily fixed ....
It strike [sic] me that if inserting these few words is a good idea for PA, it might be worth suggesting to Electors in other states
Pennsylvania attorneys eventually added the following introduction to their elector vote certificates:
WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, on the understanding that if, as a result of a final non-appealable Court Order or other proceeding prescribed by law, we are ultimately recognized as being the duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Pennsylvania, hereby certify the following ....By December 12, 2020, Unindicted Coconspirator 4 had prepared documents for each state except New Mexico. [REDACTED] asked Unindicted Coconspirator 4 to prepare New Mexico. He did, and included his drafted contingency language as follows, "WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, on the understanding that it might later be determined that we are the duty elected and qualified Electors .... "
Look familiar?
Because that's exactly what happened.
The new part is learning that the idea of the text added to the Pennsylvania and Nevada fake certificates came out of a discussion in Pennsylvania.
AZ Law blog says this about UC4:
Unindicted co-conspirator #4 is a Trump campaign atty who didn't get indicted (like Eastman, Ellis, Giuliani and Bobb), but wrote memos. That is likely Kenneth Chesebro, who had been extensively interviewed by AZ AG's office.
Ok. But, still, who was that "Pennsylvania attorney" mentioned?
So now I am wondering if someone (anyone??) in the Pennsylvania political reporting class will ask State Senator Doug Mastriano (reportedly the WH's "point person" on the Pennsylvania part of Trump's "fake elector" scheme) and/or Allegheny County Counsel-at-Large and chair of the Republican Committee of Allegheny County Sam DeMarco III (one of the signers of the Pennsylvania "fake elector" certificate) if they had any comment on these indictments out of Arizona - seeing that discussions in Pennsylvania got a solid mention in them.
Anyone? Anyone?
