Arizona’s fake electors score a win with laughable free speech claim | Opinion
It’s a good day for Arizona’s fake electors, the ones who claim they had a First Amendment right to try to steal the 2020 election.
A judge on Monday ruled that the 16 remaining fake electors and allies of President Donald Trump can press on with their claim that they’re being illegally persecuted for merely exercising their constitutional rights.
I’d say that the judge should have laughed them out of court — except, he didn’t.
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“The court finds that the defendant’s motions do include information that the charges in this case include, at least in part, some arguably lawful exercise of their rights of petition and speech,” Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sam Myers wrote.
Attorney General Kris Mayes vowed to appeal, but Monday’s ruling is a serious setback for those who don’t believe in a First Amendment right to steal an election.
Judge will let the First Amendment claim proceed
The motion to dismiss fraud, forgery and conspiracy charges is based on Arizona’s anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) law, which since 2022 has barred prosecutors from bringing criminal charges to suppress or punish free speech.
As fake elector/Sen. Jake Hoffman’s lawyer argued when the motion to dismiss was first brought last summer, “There’s a difference between a group of people committing fraud and a group of people expressing an unpopular political belief.”
Indeed, there is.
The First Amendment gives Hoffman and his fellow fakers the right to howl to the heavens that the election was stolen.
They can point to non-existent mules and suspicious Sharpies. They can wax on about dead voters and hacked tabulators.
No evidence needed, just a healthy set of lungs and a sophisticated social media campaign.
Fake electors claim Mayes has it out for them
What they can’t do — or at least, shouldn’t be able to do — is claim that the First Amendment gives them the right to try to overturn the results of an election.
But, as it turns out, maybe they can, based on Monday’s ruling.
“Defendant’s motions also include information that the attorney general has made statements in the past, suggesting that what happened in this case should never happen again, which they argue shows a desire to deter the actions that were alleged in this case,” Myers wrote.
Well, does anybody believe that what happened in the aftermath of the 2020 election should happen again?
That a group of people, under some warped view of the First Amendment, should be able sign a fraudulent document, certifying to Congress and the vice president that they were “duly elected” by Arizona’s voters to cast Arizona’s presidential votes for the candidate who lost the election?
The fake electors claim they were merely “alternate” electors, casting Arizona’s electoral votes for Trump in the event that legal challenges to the election were successful.
They aren’t like fake electors in other states
The “alternate elector” defense works in Pennsylvania or New Mexico, where the Trump electors added that caveat to the official certifications they sent to Congress and the National Archives.
In New Mexico, the Trump electors signed “on the understanding that it might later be determined that [they] are the duly elected and qualified Electors.”
In Pennsylvania, they said their votes for Trump should count only “if, as a result of a final non-appealable court order or other proceeding prescribed by law, we are ultimately recognized as being the duly elected and qualified electors.”
But Arizona’s fake electors offered no such hedge.
They simply signed a document simply declaring themselves “duly elected and qualified Electors,” sent by the state’s voters to cast our votes for Trump.
Then they sent that so-called official certification to Congress and the National Archives as part of plan to block the transfer of power to the man who won.
Mayes now has 45 days to prove that she’s not retaliating against the poor victims.
The ones who tried to steal our vote.
Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) at @LaurieRobertsaz, on Threads at @LaurieRobertsaz and on BlueSky at @laurieroberts.bsky.social.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona’s fake electors score a win with laughable free speech claim | Opinion
