MJP –
One Republican from Arizona has pled guilty to her part in a plot where she falsely claimed to be an elector for former president Trump in 2020. This was part of a larger effort by Trump and his associates to undermine the election.
A single count of filing a “false instrument”—the phony Electoral College certificate—was accepted by Lorraine Pellegrino, one of eleven Republican state representatives from Arizona who lied about being Trump’s elector that year. She was facing multiple charges, including this state-level one, for allegedly conspiring to tamper with Arizona’s election results.
In April, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes filed a comprehensive indictment that included the 11 impostor electors and multiple high-ranking Trump associates. A state grand jury in Arizona named Trump as an unindicted coconspirator, but the grand jury did not press charges against him. Several Trump’s actions to discredit President Joe Biden’s victory led to federal and Georgia felony charges. One of these was his use of a phoney elector scheme.
It’s the second win for Democratic Mayes in the Arizona case in as many days; Pellegrino’s plea deal is the second one. Jenna Ellis, a former Trump campaign attorney and one of the 18 defendants, started cooperating with prosecutors this week in hopes of having the accusations against her dropped. Just as last year in the Georgia case, Ellis cooperated with prosecutors.
While hundreds have been charged in a few states, Pellegrino is the first participant in the elector scheme to admit criminal responsibility for signing the phony paperwork. According to documents filed with the Arizona court, the other accusations against her, such as conspiracy and forgery, were dropped as a result of the agreement. The details of her agreement, which involves a three-year probationary period and no jail time, were disclosed in other documents.
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Attorney Joshua Kolsrud stated that Loraine Pellegrino wanted to “move forward and put this matter behind her” by accepting a reduced charge in her plea. By accepting complete responsibility for her acts, she has shown that she is dedicated to following the law and making a constructive impact on the community. Her contrition and desire to make apologies are recognized by the penalty of community service and unsupervised probation.
Following his 2020 election loss, Trump’s legal team plotted to call their presidential electors in several states where Biden was officially declared the winner. The lawyers first claimed that the so-called contingent electors were stand-ins for when Trump won his challenges to the election results.
To prolong the proceedings and legal disputes, Trump associates such as Rudy Giuliani and Ellis started to rely on Republican state legislatures to certify the Trump electors. After those failed, Trump considered a more extreme strategy: on January 6, 2021, when Congress and Vice President Mike Pence were supposed to certify the election results, he could use the fact that there were fake slates of electors to stir up trouble.
In the end, a pro-Trump mob rushed the Capitol and threatened to disrupt the transfer of power for hours that day when Pence refused to comply with the plan, raising Trump’s displeasure.
