“Hey Frank

“You wrote about Trump’s attorney, Boris Epshteyn’s involvement in a cryptocurrency deal. But isn’t Boris in real trouble with the Arizona Fake Elector Indictment? Like nine felonies?”

–Adel Mann

Boris Epshteyn is named in the indictment, along with other Trump allies. He faces nine felony charges related to his alleged role in the plan to submit alternate electors. If convicted, he could face significant legal penalties. However, political and legal hurdles have stalled the case, and questions remain about whether it will proceed to trial or result in convictions.

It began in 2020.

Arizona officials certified Biden as the state’s presidential winner, but Trump and his allies contested the result, citing claims of cheating and ballot fraud.

Maybe there was.

On December 14, 2020, Arizona’s certified electors met to cast their 11 electoral votes for Biden.

On December 14, 2020, 11 Arizona Republicans met at the state GOP headquarters to sign certificates claiming they were Arizona’s ‘duly elected and qualified’ electors. They did this to help expose alleged election fraud.

Their plan: on January 6, as Pence opened the electoral votes, he would encounter two Arizona slates—one for Biden, one for Trump. This could allow him to reject Biden’s electors, delay the count, or refer the election results back to state legislatures.

Seven states executed the same plan.

Pence ignored all the competing slates and certified Biden as the winner. Biden became president.

The Arizona Fake Elector Indictment

Kristin Mayes, a Democrat, ran for Arizona Attorney General in 2022.

She campaigned on punishing Republicans who interfered with the 2020 presidential election in Arizona. She won by 280 votes. It was the closest statewide race in Arizona history.

Mayes took office in January 2023.

On April 23, 2024, Mayes indicted 18 Republicans she said tried to steal the 2020 presidential election in Arizona by trying to get Pence to accept their certificates. Mayes alleged the electors forged the certificates and filed them with fraudulent intent. The others conspired with them.

The indictment, it seems, was timed to interfere with the Trump election efforts against Kamala Harris.

The indictment names the eleven Arizona Republicans who cast electoral votes for Trump, as well as those involved in the plan, including the president’s attorney, Boris Epshteyn, and other Trump allies active in his campaign, such as Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Jenna Ellis, Christina Bobb, Mark Meadows, and Michael Roman.

The indictment names Trump as Unindicted Coconspirator 1 — the man whose presidency the defendants were trying to preserve.

Epshteyn’s alleged role, as described in the indictment, was to assist Giuliani in executing the plan across all seven states and to help obstruct the certification of electoral results during the January 6 joint session. The charges against him focus on whether this conduct amounted to criminal conspiracy and fraud under Arizona law.

Campaign’s Doubts

The indictment relies on disputes between those working on the 2020 plan to send the certificates.

At the time, some of them had questioned the plan. Jason Miller called it new ground. Justin Clark said it was a crazy play. Tim Murtaugh would not sign a statement.

Mayes said this shows they knew their actions were wrong.

At the time, lawyers in Pennsylvania reviewed the certificates for their own plan. They added a condition stating that their alternate electoral votes would count only if a court ruled they were valid.

Attorney Kenneth Chesebro, who drafted the plan, said he would add the same condition in every state.

Michael Roman, the campaign’s election operations director, rejected the added legal language, basing his decision on optics rather than legal advice.

The Arizona indictment treats the rejection of added language as proof that all 18 defendants intended to commit fraud.

What They Filed

If it was fraud, it was not the secretive kind. The electors sent the certificates to the President of the Senate, the Arizona Secretary of State, the Archivist, and a federal judge. They stated they were Republican electors.

The Arizona Republican Party posted a one-minute video of the signing ceremony on social media the same day it happened.

This appears to have been a political strategy. Pence, aware of the certificates, chose to ignore them.

Nine Counts, No Tampered Ballots

The indictment does not allege that anyone changed a vote total, destroyed a ballot, or interfered with Arizona’s count. Arizona’s certified results held. Biden won Arizona by 10,457 votes. Biden got the 11 electoral votes.

Eighteen months after her 2022 election, Mayes filed her indictment in April 2024 — seven months before the presidential election, with Trump as the Republican nominee. She indicted 18 of Trump’s allies involved in helping him try to win the election.

All were charged at a pivotal moment in the campaign.

Mayes’s Style

Mayes secured two agreements out of 18 defendants.

Lorraine Pellegrino, one of the 11 Republicans who signed the certificates, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor—filing a false document—and received probation. Her husband had stage 4 cancer, and she could not fight the case while caring for him.

Then there is Jenna Ellis, Giuliani’s attorney. She traveled with him, stood beside him at press conferences, and made the same arguments in the same rooms. When Georgia indicted her, she pleaded guilty and wept in court, saying she never should have represented Trump.

When Arizona indicted her, she signed a cooperation agreement to testify against Giuliani. Mayes dropped all nine charges the moment Ellis signed.

The Case Is Falling Apart

In May 2025, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sam Myers, appointed by a Democratic governor, sent the case back to the grand jury because Mayes had not shown the grand jurors the Electoral Count Act of 1887. This federal law governs how Congress handles competing electoral slates and is central to the defendants’ argument that they acted lawfully.

Judge Myers ruled the grand jurors needed to see it before deciding whether to indict anyone.

An appellate court would not take Mayes’ appeal of the grand jury ruling.

On the anti-SLAPP motion, Judge Myers found that the defendants met their burden by showing the indictment targeted lawful political speech. The burden then shifted to Mayes to show the absence of a retaliatory motive.

The Supreme Court has said that political speech, which is what these Republicans did, at its core, is at the heart of the First Amendment.

You do not lose that right because your legal theory is wrong.

According to KJZZ, the Arizona Supreme Court granted Attorney General Kris Mayes’ request to delay a deadline in the “fake electors” case, but it is unclear whether the case will reach trial before her term ends or what actions future attorneys general will take.

Critics believe Mayes will drag out the case until after the election. If she wins, it may quietly end; if she loses, her successor might charge her with election interference.

Swampish

Mayes is that special breed of American prosecutor who knows the indictment itself is the destroying factor. Used as a weapon, it is almost as good as a conviction and accomplishes, or tries to accomplish, the politics she wants.

Critics claim that similar actions could one day be taken against her.

Possible Charges

Arizona’s anti-SLAPP statute.

Judge Myers found evidence that Mayes brought the indictment to punish lawful political speech. That finding establishes the predicate. Mayes’s conduct is the definition of using the color of office to interfere with political rights.

Election interference under Arizona law.

Arizona Revised Statutes 16-1004 prohibits the use of intimidation, threats, or coercion to interfere with someone’s right to vote or to participate in elections. Indicting 18 campaign operatives seven months before a presidential election with nine felonies each could be her coercion; she designed to suppress political activity.

Abuse of office.

Arizona law prohibits public officials from using their offices to violate citizens’ constitutional rights. The First Amendment argument the defendants are making — that Mayes prosecuted protected speech — is essentially an abuse-of-office claim.

The outside organization.

Christina Bobb has filed a motion arguing that the case was built not by Mayes’s office but by States United Democracy Center, a Democratic-aligned outside group, raising questions about improper outside influence on a criminal prosecution. Follow the money on that one.

Fraudulent Schemes and Artifices — A.R.S. 13-2310(A)

The same charge Mayes used against the defendants may be the best road to indict her. A scheme to defraud, using the power of the attorney general’s office to damage a presidential campaign and help her own reelection, fits the Class 2 felony statute. A first offense carries a sentence of 3 to 12.5 years in prison.

Conspiracy — A.R.S. 13-1003

If Mayes coordinated with States United Democracy Center — the Democratic organization that handed her a 47-page prosecution roadmap before she took office — to bring politically motivated charges, conspiracy attaches to the underlying fraud. Class 2 felony.

Interference with an Election Officer — A.R.S. 16-1004

The statute prohibits anyone from interfering with an election officer in the discharge of their duty. Indicting 18 campaign operatives seven months before a presidential election to distract them from working on that campaign could be interference with the electoral process. Class 5 felony. Six months to two and a half years.

The Practical Obstacle

Prosecutors generally have immunity from civil liability for charging decisions under federal and Arizona law. A successor AG would need to argue that Mayes stepped outside her prosecutorial role and acted as a political operative, using the office as her weapon rather than as a prosecutor exercising judgment.

Mayes threw the boomerang. She indicted people for doing something that had never been successfully prosecuted before, on a novel legal theory, timed to a political calendar.

A successor AG could use every argument she made against her.

bannon boris crypto - Frank Report — Boris

But you asked about Boris. No, Boris is not likely to be in trouble for the weaponization of justice by a swampy creature named Kristin Mayes. Quite possibly Mayes herself might take the fall into the quicksand she set up for her political adversaries.