Democrats’ lawfare efforts hit a snag in Arizona after the state’s Supreme Court blocked Attorney General Kris Mayes’ prosecution efforts against President Donald Trump’s allies. But she has already indicated she will try again.
The Arizona Supreme Court declined to review lower court decisions that sent the state’s case back on due process grounds. Just minutes after the ruling, a spokesman for Mayes’ office said she “will take the case back to a grand jury to seek new indictments.”
This means the Democrats will have to start all over instead of moving to trial.
The original indictment targeted several Arizona Republicans for their efforts to challenge the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Mayes sought to charge them with conspiracy, fraudulent schemes, and multiple counts of forgery.
The authorities claimed the individuals gathered together on December 14, 2020 and voted for Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence as fake electors. The indictment says they sent false certificates to the vice president, the Archivist of the United States, and other officials. This was supposedly aimed at pressuring Pence to reject Arizona’s certified Biden electors on January 6, 2021.
The state alleges that the defendants “deceived the citizens of Arizona by falsely claiming that those votes were contingent only on a legal challenge.” However, the objective was to keep Trump in office regardless of what the courts ruled.
However, a Maricopa County judge ruled in May 2025 that prosecutors failed to give the grand jury the full text of the 1887 Electoral Count Act. The state appealed, but the higher court concurred with the previous court’s findings. Now, the Arizona Supreme Court ended Mayes’ attempt to resurrect the old indictment.
AZ Attorney General Kris Mayes’ will take the "fake electors" case back to a grand jury after the AZ Supreme Court denied her request to review a judge’s decision that sent the case back to square one. https://t.co/DctaGlb9oe
— Wayne Schutsky (@WayneSchutsky) June 4, 2026
Instead of calling it quits and ending this blatant attempt to use the government to punish their political opponents, Mayes’ team plans to resubmit the case to another grand jury. Basically, it looks like Mayes is bent on forcing the defendants to spend more time and money defending themselves in a battle that started over five years ago. As they say, the process is the punishment, right?
Dr. Kelli Ward, one of the defendants, slammed Mayes in a post on X. “How much taxpayer money will Kris Mayes waste in her 5+ year old political vendetta against me & other Trump allies?” she wrote. “The Judge ruled that she violated our rights. She appealed to appeals court & lost. Now the AZ Supreme Court handed her another loss. When will the political persecution & lawfare end?”
This has nothing to do with justice. It’s the exact same conduct that prompted Trump to create the Anti-Weaponization Fund. Now we can see why Democrats were so opposed to it. The thing about weaponizing the government against people is that those wielding that power know the people they target typically don’t have the resources to fight back. Even if they manage to win, they still experience tremendous hardship.
This is about political retribution, nothing more. Hopefully the new effort fails too.