BREAKING: Trump 2020 Alternate Electors Indicted in Arizona in Democrat AG Mayes’ Witch Hunt – Trump Listed as Unindicted Co-Conspirator!

Trump 2020 alternate electors, GOP state legislators, former Arizona GOP chairwoman Kelli Ward and others were indicted by a state grand jury in Arizona on Wednesday.

Arizona’s Democrat Attorney General Kris Mayes announced on Wednesday afternoon. She defended her witch hunt and the curious timing of the indictment – just months before the 2024 general election. Make no mistake, the charges are a warning shot to anyone who may want to challenge the 2024 election.

In a dirty move, Mayes’ office knew the alternate electors were going to invoke their Fifth Amendment rights but she made them appear before a grand jury anyway. This is a highly unusual and risky move.

The Fifth Amendment allows a person to exercise their right to remain silent to protect against self-incrimination.

Democrat prosecutors requiring the Pro-Trump alternate electors to plead the Fifth before a grand jury could unnecessarily prejudice the grand jurors.

Although the Fifth Amendment is not an admission of guilt, grand jurors may assume the pro-Trump alternate electors are guilty.

The state grand jury on Wednesday indicted 11 Trump alternate electors, state legislators, GOP activists and others.

It appears Mark Meadows and possibly Rudy Giuliani or Michael Roman were also indicted, but their names were redacted.

President Trump was named “Unindicted Coconspirator-1” in the indictment because he made a phone call about the ballot counting to former governor Doug Ducey.

Happening today:

Supreme Court to hear Trump’s bid for criminal immunity

In the final argument scheduled for its 2023-2024 term, the Supreme Court will hear argument on Thursday in former President Donald Trump’s historic bid for criminal immunity. The question before the justices is whether Trump can be tried on criminal charges that he conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The court’s answer will determine not only whether Trump’s trial in Washington, D.C., before U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, originally scheduled for March 4 but now on hold, can go forward, but also whether the former president’s trials in Florida and Georgia can proceed.

Jury selection is currently underway in a Manhattan courtroom, where Trump is being tried on charges that he broke state law when he made a “hush money” payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels so that she would remain silent about her alleged affair with Trump as the 2016 presidential election approached. But Trump, the first president to be criminally prosecuted, was not yet president when the alleged conduct at the center of that case occurred.

Trump was indicted last summer on four counts arising from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol. Trump, the indictment contends, created “widespread mistrust … through pervasive and destabilizing lies about election fraud” and then perpetrated three criminal conspiracies to target “a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election.”

Is there a crime in there? I don’t see one.

Trump sought to have the charges against him thrown out, arguing that he is immune from prosecution because he was president. After Chutkan denied that request in December, it was Smith who came to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to weigh in on Trump’s claim to immunity without waiting for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to rule on Trump’s appeal. The justices denied that request on Dec. 22.

Six weeks later, the D.C. Circuit upheld Chutkan’s ruling and rejected Trump’s immunity claims. It told Trump that its decision would go into effect (and that the criminal case against him could therefore go forward) on Feb. 12 unless he asked the Supreme Court to intervene by then.

That meant it was Trump’s turn to go to the Supreme Court, seeking to have the D.C. Circuit’s ruling put on hold so that he could file a petition for review of that decision. He stressed the importance of “thoughtful consideration,” while Smith countered that Trump’s trial should be allowed to proceed without further delay.

In a brief unsigned order two weeks later, the justices agreed to weigh in on whether and to what extent a former president is immune from prosecution for conduct that allegedly involves his official acts during his time as president. The justices fast-tracked the case for argument during its April argument session, and it instructed the D.C. Circuit to keep its ruling on hold until the Supreme Court issues its decision.

In his brief at the Supreme Court on the merits, Trump tells the justices that allowing the charges against him to go forward would pose “a mortal threat to the Presidency’s independence.” “The President cannot function,” Trump contends, “and the Presidency itself cannot retain its vital independence, if the President faces criminal prosecution for official acts once he leaves office,” because the threat of prosecution will hang over the president’s decision-making process. Trump cites a law review article by then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who before becoming a judge worked in the George W. Bush White House, arguing that “a President who is concerned about an ongoing criminal investigation is almost inevitably going to do a worse job as President.“ The same is true, Trump continues, “if that criminal investigation is waiting in the wings until he leaves office.”

Trump maintains that a president can never be prosecuted for his official acts. He points first to a “long history” of an absence of prosecutions, notwithstanding what he characterizes as “ample motive and opportunity” – everything from the appointment by John Quincy Adams of Henry Clay as secretary of state “after Clay delivered the 1824 election to him in the House” to President Joe Biden’s “mismanagement of the southern border.”

Immunity from criminal prosecution, Trump argues, also comes from the Constitution and the principle of the separation of powers. A provision known as the executive vesting clause gives the president the “executive power,” which, under the principle of separation of powers, courts cannot sit in judgment over, Trump observes. In the landmark Marbury v. Madison case, Trump continues, the Supreme Court ruled that courts can never review a president’s official acts. And in 1982, in Nixon v. Fitzgerald, the justices ruled that a president cannot be held liable for “acts within the outer perimeter of his official responsibility.” If courts cannot review the president’s official acts or hold him liable in civil courts, Trump continues, it must also be the case that he cannot face criminal charges for his official acts – which would result in a far greater intrusion on the president’s independence than allowing courts to enter civil orders against him.

Trump also relies on another provision of the Constitution, known as the impeachment judgment clause, which provides that someone who is impeached and convicted can still be indicted, tried, and punished “according to Law.” This clause signals, Trump says, that a president can be criminally prosecuted only after he has first been impeached by the House of Representatives and then convicted by the Senate. Such a rule, Trump argues, strikes a balance between holding the president accountable for wrongdoing and “the mortal danger presented by political targeting of the” president.

Finally, Trump urges the justices to reject another theory on which the court of appeals had relied – specifically, the idea that a president is not entitled to immunity from criminal prosecution if his conduct was purportedly motivated by a desire to stay in power illegally. Not only has the Supreme Court made clear that there is no role for courts in reviewing a president’s official actions, but it has also held that the purpose or motive behind the alleged misconduct does not play a role when determining whether an official is immune. “Worst of all,” Trump writes, “this approach risks creating the appearance of a gerrymandered ruling tailored to deprive only President Trump of immunity, while leaving all other Presidents untouched.”

The article continues with Jack Smith’s counterarguments. If SCOTUS doesn’t rule in Trump’s favor this could be very bad, both for his current legal situation but also for the country. I would think that former presidents would be concerned, if we ever got honest people with integrity into positions of authority.