Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes on Thursday announced she is dismissing her years-long witch hunt against President Donald Trump’s allies while desperately clinging to hope she can soon resurrect it. Perhaps a new motion filed in Maricopa County Court alleging Mayes and fellow far-left attorneys general from multiple swing states engaged in prosecutorial collusion forced her hand.
Attorneys for Christina Bobb, former Republican National Committee Counsel for Election Integrity, have filed a motion to disqualify Mayes from the case, accusing the Democrat of working with leftist lawfare group States United Democracy Center in her corrupt prosecution. A supplemental filing to the motion obtained by The Federalist asserts the coordinated campaign originated from a “small group of politically motivated lawyers to pursue partisan interests.”
And the lawfare warriors — including Arizona’s politically motivated attorney general — “are functionally tools of the Democratic Party,” Bobb’s legal counsel, Tucson lawyer Thomas Jacobs, told The Federalist in a phone interview on Wednesday. According to the court filing, the Democratic Attorneys General Association cut a $200,000 check to the attorney general’s legal defense fund after Bobb and her fellow co-defendants were paraded into court for their arraignments.
It all appears to be an extreme conflict of interest, and certainly not the narrative of noble public servants taking down the “fake elector” schemers behind Trump’s attempt to “overthrow” the 2020 election. That big lie on the left has been crumbling in courtrooms in several swing states, including in Arizona where the state’s highest court took Mayes’ legally suspect prosecution off life support earlier this month.
But the documents obtained by Judicial Watch suggest Arizona’s lawfare has direct ties to those in Nevada, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The swing states were pivotal in deciding the 2020 presidential election, and where Trump’s attorneys legally challenged the narrow margins of victory for Joe Biden that put the autopen president in the White House. Strange that, according to once-hidden records, these states all received legal guidance and strategies on how to prosecute the people they marked as “election deniers” from States United Democracy Center.
“Maybe it is just a coincidence that all of the states that indicted Trump allies with the same ridiculous unprecedented charges all get legal counsel from States United,” Bobb’s court filing states. “However, the available evidence seems to indicate that many of these political cases, both civil and criminal, are created and pushed by States United Democracy Center. They are merely hiding behind the government officials willing to accept the non-profit’s political influence and funding in exchange for government criminal prosecution authority.”
So, as Mayes prosecutes Bobb and the others on “charges related to a conspiracy to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election,” the AG and her leftist lawfare friends are accused of “conducting a wide-reaching multi-state political influence campaign using its political power to influence criminal prosecutions of political opponents.”
‘This Obsession is not Justice’
In May 2024, Mayes got a grand jury to indict 18 people in what Democrats falsely billed as a “fake electors” case. The indictment arrived three and a half years after 11 Arizona Republicans stood as alternate electors following the rigged 2020 presidential election. Each was charged with nine felonies including fraud, forgery, and conspiracy. State Sen. Jake Hoffman, founding chairman of the Arizona Freedom Caucus, former Arizona Sen. Anthony Kern, and Tyler Bowyer, Turning Point Action Chief Operating Officer, were among the indicted.
Trump was identified as an “unindicted co-conspirator.”
Also charged were Trump attorney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, and former Trump lawyer John Eastman. Bobb stands accused of making “false claims of widespread election fraud in Arizona and in six other states.”
Some of the defendants also faced or are facing charges in other states on similar allegations.
But Mayes has had a difficult time holding her trumped-up case together.
On Thursday, Mayes dismissed the charges, but she’s not done yet. KTAR News in Phoenix reported that “the legal maneuver is aimed at getting around a Friday deadline for starting new grand jury proceedings …”
“This case is complex and will require substantial presentation of evidence and time to accommodate defendants’ request to testify and present evidence,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.
Earlier this month, the Arizona Supreme Court denied the state’s appeal to resurrect the moribund political witch hunt. Lower courts previously had found that the AGs indictments were invalid because she had failed to inform jurors of the 1887 Electoral Count Act, which lays out why the defendants strategy was not illegal.
As The Federalist has extensively reported, the use of alternate electors was used in the disputed 1960 presidential election, and the strategy was considered again during the disputed 2000 election — by Democrat Al Gore. In Trump’s case, the campaign was still legally challenging ballots in swing states as the deadline for states to submit their elector certificates to Congress approached. The alternate electors met at their respective state legislatures to preserve Trump’s votes in the event the campaign prevailed in its court challenges.
And the state court of appeals recently found that Mayes illegally withheld communications between the AG’s office and the States United Democracy Center. Judicial Watch sued the attorney general, who insisted the documents sought were protected by attorney-client privilege. The judge disagreed.
The Arizona Supreme Court told Mayes that she would have to convince a new grand jury to indict the defendants all over again. AG spokesman Richie Taylor said the prosecutor plans to do just that.
Arizona GOP chairwoman Gina Swoboda told the Arizona Capitol Times that Mayes should “stop wasting time and taxpayer resources on partisan lawfare.”
“Five years later, Kris Mayes is still fixated on 2020 while violent crime, fentanyl trafficking, and border chaos threaten our communities every single day,” Swoboda said in the statement. “This obsession is not justice — it’s politics.”
And that is precisely what Bobb’s motion alleges: such a politically obsessed AG is not qualified to prosecute this case.
The Stench of Weaponization
States United Democracy Center is the brainchild of Norm Eisen, a left-leaning lawyer who served as the “Ethics Czar” in the Obama White House. The group was launched originally as the Voter Protection Program “to coordinate left-leaning advocacy groups and Democratic campaign committees in the event that then-President Donald Trump lost and subsequently contested the results of the 2020 Presidential Election,” according to nonprofit tracker InfluenceWatch.
States United claims that it is an “initiative of the Progressive State Leaders Committee,” a “shell non-profit,” but is actually the Democratic Attorneys General Association, Bobb’s court filing states. At the least the PSLC is closely tied to DAGA. And DAGA contributed $200,000 to Mayes’ cause while its lawfare arm was helping round up political enemies, according to the filing.
Records show Mayes was at a DAGA policy conference in May 2024 as Bobb and her co-defendants were booked and had their mug shots taken, drawing the expected media circus.
“No doubt having political opponents arrested in the middle of a fundraiser and forced to give fingerprints and stand for mug shots which were widely circulated around the internet and media sources helped fundraising efforts,” the court filing states.
Communications show senior leaders at the DAGA are “directing the litigation targeting political” opponents, the motion supplement asserts. Every participant named in a key email is a DAGA executive.
And the Biden administration was involved, attaching a greater stink of politics on the prosecution. Travel expenditure documents show Mayes and others interviewed witnesses at Biden’s White House, according to the filing. They even requested to stay at “the higher rate” hotel.
“AG Mayes claims that her White House visit was for a discussion with then Vice President Kamala Harris,” the court filing states. “However, the investigators on the case make clear in their travel vouchers that they were interviewing witnesses for this case and AG Mayes participated in both the interviews and the conference.”
Arizona’s solicitor general, Josh Bender, also sent an email to then-U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s chief of staff asking about the criminal prosecution of Trump’s allies. The email included a joint letter from attorneys general in Arizona, Nevada, and Michigan seeking the special counsel’s file on the prosecution of Donald Trump, according to the court filing.
“What interest does Nevada, Michigan, or the federal government have in this Arizona criminal prosecution?” Jacobs, Bobb’s lawyer, asks in the motion supplement. Judicial Watch had obtained that information through its open records request in Arizona, after the Nevada Attorney General’s Office had refused to provide the same information on the grounds that it was “common interest privilege.” It was not. The only common interest is political, Jabobs argues.
Mayes’ office did not return The Federalist’s calls for comment.
‘A Grave National Injustice’
Similar alternate elector cases have collapsed in other states like Georgia, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania. In Michigan, a district court judge tossed out the bogus felony charges against 15 Republicans, finding the defendants, “were executing their constitutional right to seek redress.”
Wisconsin’s politically-driven prosecution survives despite being marred by controversy.
In that case, Attorney General Josh Kaul has spent the past two years pushing manipulated charges of felony forgery against Trump’s campaign attorneys who had the temerity to represent the president. Former Dane County Judge Jim Troupis, his fellow legal counsel Kenneth Chesebro, and Trump campaign aide Mike Roman, this week pleaded not guilty to the charges first brought a little more than two years ago. Kaul, who previously worked at Russia Collusion hoaxer Marc Elias’ law firm, filed the case just as Trump was securing his third GOP presidential nomination. He is prosecuting Trump’s allies despite the fact that his own Department of Justice attorneys have found that the men did nothing illegal in employing the alternate electors strategy.
The co-defendants are seeking to move the trial from leftist bastion Dane County to nearby Jefferson County after presenting strong evidence suggesting judicial bias and corruption. The case has been marred by controversy, including allegations that a former Dane County judge with a grudge against Troupis was the ghostwriter of a ruling killing a motion to dismiss Kaul’s politically-driven prosecution.
Trump in November pardoned all three men and dozens of others raked over the coals in the alleged coordinated electors prosecutions.
“This proclamation ends a grave national injustice perpetrated upon the American people following the 2020 Presidential Election and continues the process of national reconciliation,” the pardon announcement said.
The federal pardons do nothing, however, to end state prosecutions of the bogus charges.
But Judicial Watch’s trove of records and the Bobb’s motion to disqualify Arizona’s AG could go a long way in euthanizing Kaul’s corrupt prosecution in Wisconsin.
‘That’s Like a Mob’
According to the Arizona court filing, States United solicited Kaul for participation in its multistate litigation scheme. Following the initial solicitation from States United’s CEO Joanna Lydgate to Kaul, the Wisconsin Department of Justice “received, and likely participated in many States United zoom calls and presentations targeting political opponents.”
“They provided several talking points to AG Kaul (Exhibit KK) and even worked as a booker for media appearances on behalf of AG Kaul and the Voter Protection Program,” the court filing states. The Wisconsin Department of Justice participated in the regular ‘States United Noon Briefings’ along with many other politically aligned states.”
Kaul’s team also participated in the presentation put together by DAGA’s executive team and presented by Eisen to “States United’s cooperating AGs and staff,” the filing states.
“The presentation’s power point discussed how to stop Donald Trump and Trump supporters. The presentation was less than two months before Arizona AG Kris Mayes opened this grand jury investigation.”
Bobb filed a similar motion late last year calling out Mayes’ alleged conflict of interest. She couldn’t get the court to hear her arguments at the time. The latest information raises much deeper questions and concerns about Mayes’ role in a coordinated effort to target political enemies.
“Arizona had to do backflips to make the law fit the charges,” Bobb’s attorney Thomas Jacobs told The Federalist. “You wouldn’t bring these charges unless you had an ax to grind and a political agenda.”
“[Mayes] took money for the purpose of keeping her in office, and did fundraising for the [Democratic Attorneys General Association]. That is not independent prosecution. That’s like a mob, and it turns the attorney general’s office into mob lawyers,” Jacobs added.
