Arizona fake electors case: State supreme court denies prosecutor's appeal

Fake electors case: AZ Supreme Court denies appeal

The fake electors case in Arizona is starting over, after the state's Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from Attorney General Kris Mayes.

PHOENIX - The state supreme court has rejected an appeal from prosecutors in the so-called "Arizona fake electors case" linked to the 2020 Presidential Election.

What we know:

The decision means the case against former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and several others will be sent back to a grand jury.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes says her office plans to present the case again to a grand jury rather than drop the prosecution.

The backstory:

Among those charged are 11 people who submitted a document falsely claiming Donald Trump won Arizona, two former Trump aides and five lawyers connected to Trump, including Rudy Giuliani.

An indictment alleges that Giuliani pressured Maricopa County officials and state legislators to change the election results and encouraged Republican electors in the state to vote for Trump in mid-December 2020. The indictment says Giuliani spread false claims of election fraud in Arizona and presided over a downtown Phoenix gathering where he claimed officials made no effort to determine the accuracy of presidential election results.

Dig deeper:

Back in May, a lower-court Phoenix judge ruled that grand jurors were not given important information about federal election law before returning the original indictments.