A woman has pleaded guilty in the Arizona Trump electors case, just two day after lawyer Jenna Ellis reached a plea agreement. Loraine Pellegrino, former president of the group Ahwatukee Republican Women, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a misdemeanor charge of filing a false document.....CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE>>>
She was sentenced to unsupervised probation for three years and must complete community service. Initially, she had pleaded not guilty and was facing nine felony counts.
Ellis, once a major figure in the Trump campaign, may be called to testify against former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and her other Arizona co-accused.
The alternate electors in Arizona and other states had hoped that Vice President Mike Pence would certify Trump as the winner of the 2020 election. Pence refused to do so on January 6, 2021. A group of Trump supporters then stormed the Capitol, some of them chanting threatening slogans about Pence.
Prosecutors in Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada have also filed criminal charges for fake Trump electors in their state. A judge dismissed the Nevada case in June and prosecutors are now appealing, The Hill reported.
On Monday, attorney Jenna Ellis reached a plea agreement with prosecutors in the Arizona case. She has already renounced her Trump-supporting past after facing similar election fraud charges in Georgia, where she also took a plea deal but didn’t have to cooperate with the prosecution.
If Ellis cooperates with all federal or state charges filed in Arizona, “all charges against her will be dismissed,” attorney Joyce Vance wrote in her legal blog, Civil Discourse, on Monday.
“A defendant who enters into a cooperation deal like this makes themself very vulnerable. The decision about whether a defendant has failed to uphold their end of the bargain is left to the ‘sole discretion’ of prosecutors,” Vance wrote.
In April, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced the indictment of Meadows, Giuliani and 16 others, including Ellis in the Trump campaign, as well as 11 Republicans who are accused of falsely declaring that Trump won in a document sent to Congress. All except Ellis and Pellegrino have pleaded not guilty.
Arizona, where President Joe Biden defeated Trump by more than 10,000 votes, was among seven states where Republicans are accused of acting as fake electors.
Mayes announced last year that her office was investigating those who acted as electors and attempted to claim Trump had won the state in 2020.
On December 14, 2020, a group of Republicans met in Phoenix to sign a document falsely declaring themselves the “duly elected and qualified electors” for the state and claiming that Trump was the victor, and another group composed of activists also signed a similar fake declaration, according to court documents...CONTINUE READING>>
