PHOENIX — A plea deal in Georgia with the architect of the "fake electors" scheme after the 2020 election could be a sign of what's to come in Arizona's own investigation of the plan to create phony slates of Donald Trump electors, according to lawyers familiar with the states' cases.
Kenneth Chesebro, a lawyer allied with Trump, pleaded guilty Friday to a felony charge of conspiracy to file false documents. As part of the plea deal, he agreed to turn over documents, such as text message and emails, relevant to the case.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes' office disclosed last June that she was investigating Arizona's 11 phony electors.
Mayes has said her office will file charges only if if she believes the case will be successful.
Former federal prosecutor Mark Kokanovich said Monday that future disclosures by Chesebro could give Arizona prosecutors more leverage for plea agreements.
"When you have text messages and emails, a lot of times there's not much of a defense to make in these cases where it's clear that we're signing a false document," said Kokanovich, a lawyer who specializes in white-collar crime and investigations at Ballard Spahr in Phoenix.
"A lot of these people are left out on an island. And when you have to defend yourself in a fraud case, legal fees can mount very, very quickly. There are very few people that could afford to mount a sustained legal defense."
Trump's narrow election defeats in Arizona and Georgia made them ground zero for his high-pressure campaign to tamper with the results.
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The Georgia indictment in August that charged Trump and 18 others with meddling in the presidential election spelled out Chesebro's role in promoting the fake elector scheme in Arizona.
He wrote a memo with "state-specific instructions" for Trump presidential elector nominees, who by that point had lost.
Cheseboro also sent an email with attached documents to Greg Safsten, the Arizona Republican Party's then-executive director, and others for "the purpose of casting electoral votes" for Trump on Dec. 14, 2020.
In each case, the indictment says, "This was an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy."
"I think this is a question in some ways, is there a will, is there sort of an impetus" to bring charges, Andrew Weissmann, lead prosecutor in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office and a former general counsel for the FBI, said about the pending Arizona investigation during a conference call with reporters Monday.
"If you look at what Kenneth Chesbro has pled to, that is a pretty clear roadmap to how people could be charged."
Dan Barr, the chief deputy attorney general in Mayes' office, told 12News Monday that it's too soon to judge the impact of the Cheseboro plea deal.
"It doesn't hurt," he said, but "it doesn't change what we're doing."
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