Court documents released on Tuesday reveal that a state grand jury in Arizona, which charged 18 individuals this spring for a scheme attempting to overturn Donald J. Trump's 2020 election loss, also sought to indict him, The New York Times reports. But prosecutors, the papers said, recommended that Trump should not be charged, citing a Justice Department policy that discourages bringing state and federal cases against the same defendant that are largely based on similar facts. The court papers, filed in Phoenix by the Arizona attorney general’s office, revealed for the first time that the grand jurors investigating allegations of interference in that state’s election seriously considered bringing charges against Trump. Some of the grand jurors even appeared to be upset when a state prosecutor suggested they should not. When the Arizona case was filed in April, it accused some of Trump’s top allies of conspiring with a group of Republican operatives to create a slate of fake electors who declared he had won the race in Arizona when the actual winner was Joe Biden.
The Arizona case, which was initially filed by Kris Mayes, the Democratic state attorney general, is not expected to go to trial until next year at the earliest. In June, the defendants filed their opening challenge to the charges, seizing on a new state law aimed at curbing litigation and prosecutions involving political figures.
On Monday, Mayes said that she had secured her first cooperation deal in the case, announcing that Jenna Ellis, a lawyer who played a major role in Trump’s efforts to remain in power, had agreed to testify against the other defendants. On Tuesday, a second cooperation agreement became public. Loraine Pellegrino, a fake elector in Arizona, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of filing a false instrument and will avoid jail time. Pellegrino, 66, is a Phoenix area Republican activist who acted as secretary of the Arizona fake electors. While several fake Trump electors have reached cooperation agreements in other states, Pellegrino appears to be the first to plead guilty to a criminal charge.
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