Is Arizona next?
Now that Donald Trump has been criminally indicted on the federal level and in Georgia for trying to overthrow the 2020 election, what’s next? Georgia wasn’t the only swing state election result that Trump criminally tried to overthrow.
Weeks ago the Michigan Attorney General criminally indicted her state’s fake electors and stated that her investigation is ongoing, leaving open the possibility that she’s working her way up to Trump. For all we know the Michigan probe could prove to be every bit as broad as the Georgia probe. The only real difference is that Fani Willis told us from the start that she was aiming for the top, while the Michigan AG has said very little about her probe. For all we know Michigan could indict Trump tomorrow, or it could never happen.
But if you’re looking for Trump’s next indictment, it just might come from Arizona. At the time Trump committed his 2020 election crime spree, the relevant prosecutors in Arizona were still Republicans. But as of January 2023, the Arizona Attorney General is a Democrats named Kris Mayes. By all accounts she launched a probe into Trump and the fake electors right after she took office, and that probe has been escalating as the year has gone on.
While the Arizona Trump probe got off to a delayed start, that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily going to take as long as some of the other probes ended up taking. Fani Willis opted to take the time to build a massive and complex racketeering case, so it took her two years to get it to the indictment stage. But if the Arizona AG opts for more straightforward charges, that could end up taking a lot less time.
This week a local Fox affiliate in Phoenix published an article detailing the progress that the Arizona Attorney General has made in her criminal probe, and quoting the current and former Governors of Arizona as saying they expect some kind of charges to happen. Some folks on social media skimmed this article and mistakenly took it as news that the Arizona AG was readying charges against Trump, which is not what the article says. But the article is a good reminder that the Arizona AG is steadily marching in that direction.
Of course Donald Trump is already on track to stand criminal trial in four different jurisdictions between now and the next election, on a combined 91 felony charges. He’s certainly going to be convicted on at least some of those felony counts, and sent to prison. But there’s nothing that says other prosecutors like the Arizona AG or the Michigan AG can’t keep piling on with even more charges and trials. After all, Trump did commit all these crimes.
