Fake Elector Plot: Arizona Republican Activist Admits Guilt

Ex-President Donald Trump
Ex-President Donald Trump. Credit | Getty images

United States: The first guilty verdict in the state’s fake elector case, which fraudulently claimed that Trump won Arizona in the 2020 election, is of a Republican activist who signed said document.

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Loraine Pellegrino, a former president within the group Ahwatukee Republican Women, admitted to a misdemeanor by filing a false document, as Richie Taylor of Arizona Attorney General’s Office said on Tuesday and refused to elaborate.

In the case of her guilty plea records, they haven’t been uploaded by the court at the current time. However, records of the court indicate that Pellegrino was sentenced to unsupervised probation and was initially charged with nine felony counts before the plea was made.

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Currently, seventeen other people were charged in the case, involving ten other Republicans who had signed the document and claimed that they were “duly elected and qualified” electors.

The accused’s attorney, Joshua Kolsrud, said in a statement that his client, Pellegrino, was willing to take the blame for her actions.

Kolsrud added, “Loraine Pellegrino’s decision to accept a plea to a lesser charge reflects her desire to move forward and put this matter behind her,” as CBS News reported.

On Monday, Jenna Ellis, former Trump campaign attorney who collaborated with Giuliani, testified before the grand jury, and yesterday, she signed a cooperation agreement with the prosecutors who requested her charges be dropped.

All the other defendants in this case, such as Giuliani and Meadows, who was Trump’s chief of presidential staff, have all denied the charges of conspiracy, fraud, and forgery.

Pellegrino and ten others out of all the individuals nominated to be Arizona’s Republican electors had sat in Phoenix in a meeting on December 14, 2020, to put their signature on the bogus statement. The Arizona Republican Party had shared a one-minute of the signing ceremony through its social media accounts at the time.

Subsequently, lawmakers approved Mr. Biden’s electoral win over the then-incumbent Trump in a session that was interrupted when Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol.

Chief prosecutors in Michigan, Nevada, Georgia, and Wisconsin have also charged individuals in relation to the fake elector’s plot. Ellis, also charged in Georgia, pleaded guilty to a single count of the felony of assisting and abetting false statements and writing.

Arizona authorities revealed the felony charges in late April. Thus, criminal charges were filed against 11 Republicans who signed the statement claiming that Trump had won Arizona, five attorneys linked to the ex-president, and two former campaign assistants.