Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes has relied on a plan from a dark money-fueled leftist nonprofit to prosecute president-elect Donald Trump’s supporters.
That nonprofit, States United Democracy Center (“SUDC,” formerly the “Voter Protection Program”), delivered a 50-page plan to Mayes last summer to prosecute Trump’s 2020 electors and backers for their “fake elector scheme,” as first reported by the Daily Signal. SUDC was also credited by mainstream media as part of the “shadow cabal” that ensured Trump’s loss in 2020.
Before being installed into the AG's office, illegitimate @KrisMayes had never tried a case before.
So what does a climate change professor do when she wants to target conservatives, but has no idea how to do it?
She delegates to a far-left non-profit. https://t.co/WBefhoMlPt
— Abe Hamadeh War Room (@AbeWarRoom) November 22, 2024
The SUDC plan advised Mayes that she could issue the following felony criminal charges against Trump’s 2020 electors and backers: forgery, tampering with a public record, criminal impersonation, presentment of false instrument for filing, fraudulent schemes and artifices, and conspiracy. Their proposed charges included arguments for why those charges would stick. Indeed, Mayes did pursue those charges.
SUDC’s memo also advised Mayes to split Trump’s 2020 electors and backers into three categories, due to “differing levels of culpability.”
Proposed “Category 1” members were those who “directly organized or participated in the scheme in Arizona,” split into three subcategories: in-state organizers, including Jack Wilenchik, Greg Safsten, and Kelli Ward; out-of-state organizers, including Kenneth Chesebro, Rudy Giuliani, and Thomas Lane; and participants, or all the fake electors. Proposed “Category 2” members were those “who had some contact with organizers or fake electors in Arizona,” citing John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn, and Mark Meadows. Proposed “Category 3” members were merely those “who may have been involved,” naming Cleta Mitchell, Ronna McDaniel, and Trump himself.
In Arizona, @AZAGMayes is ramping up a criminal investigation into attempts to overturn the state’s presidential election results in 2020.https://t.co/lnKm9tHXr0
— States United Democracy Center (@statesunited) July 19, 2023
Trump’s reelection hasn’t deterred Arizona’s Democratic attorney general from seeing her case through. In the weeks following Trump’s win, Mayes has repeatedly pledged to continue her prosecution of Trump’s supporters.
“I have no intention of breaking that case up. I have no intention of dropping that case,” said Mayes in an interview with MSNBC days after Trump’s win. “A grand jury in the state of Arizona decided that these individuals who engaged in an attempt to overthrow our democracy in 2020 should be held accountable, so we won’t be cowed, we won’t be intimidated.”
Mayes has also vowed to oppose any conservative executive orders and legislative efforts from a Trump administration, namely concerning abortion and illegal immigration.
One of SUDC’s staffers, Ellen Pierce, was Mayes’ director of content and digital team from last February to May. Prior to that, Pierce was the communications transition advisor for Governor Katie Hobbs and a senior communications manager for former Governor Doug Ducey.
Another staffer, Alexander Atkins, joined SUDC from Elias Law Group, a key firm in countering pre-election and post-election challenges to the 2020 election.
SUDC was launched as part of the notorious 2020 “shadow campaign” a few weeks before the 2020 election (mid-October) by former President Barack Obama’s “Ethics Czar,” Norm Eisen; former Massachusetts chief deputy attorney general, Joanna Lydgate; and Christine Todd Whitman, former New Jersey governor, EPA administrator under President George W. Bush, and founding member of the Republican Leadership Council. The Progressive State Leaders Committee (PSLC) launched the nonprofit.
TIME magazine said SUDC was part of a “cabal of powerful people ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it.”
Eisen, SUDC senior advisor, was quoted in that TIME Magazine article celebrating their victory over Trump that year. Eisen also played a “critical” role in the first impeachment attempt against Trump by “building the case” while serving as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee.
With over $14.5 million in revenue, SUDC has received millions from dark money organizations such as Arabella Advisors. It allows them to compensate their leadership and pay for their operations, which include nearly 60 staff members (excluding leadership).
Lydgate receives over $370,000 in compensation as the nonprofit’s president and CEO, initially the organization’s national director.
SUDC leaders who have received ample funding — per SUDC’s last publicly-available tax filing — were Jenn Fogel Bublic, former secretary and treasurer and now COO (former deputy executive director at the Democratic Attorneys General Association); Elizabeth “Lizze” Ulmer, communications director (former communications director for the Democratic Attorneys General Association and communications for Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America); Ranjana Natarajan, former senior counsel and now chief program officer (former director of the University of Texas at Austin School of Law); Thania Sanchez, former research director and now senior vice president (former ACLU director and Yale University professor); and Christine Sun, former legal director and now senior vice president (former special assistant to Xavier Becerra, when he was the California attorney general).
The nonprofit’s original advisory board was a massive group touted as a “bipartisan” coalition of high-ranking past attorneys general, presidential appointees, and law enforcement leaders.
SUDC’s first advisory board consisted of Grant Woods, former Arizona attorney general; Jeri L. Williams, former Phoenix Police Department chief of police; Jennifer Granholm, Michigan’s former governor and attorney general; Tom Ridge, former Pennsylvania governor, former congressman, and both Homeland Security secretary and first assistant under President George W. Bush; Bill Weld, former Massachusetts governor and both Massachusetts district attorney and assistant attorney general under President Ronald Reagan; Jack Conway, former Kentucky attorney general; Frankie Sue Del Papa; former attorney general and secretary of state for Nevada; John J. Farmer Jr., former assistant U.S. attorney, New Jersey attorney general, and senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission; Jim Hood, former Mississippi attorney general; Jahna Lindemuth, former Alaska attorney general; Patricia Madrid, former New Mexico attorney general; Tom Rath, former New Hampshire attorney general and Legal Services Corporation director under President George W. Bush; Art Acevedo, former Texas chief of police for Houston and Austin; Donald Ayer, deputy attorney general under President George H.W. Bush; Greg Bower, the FBI’s former assistant director and deputy general counsel, as well as Nevada district attorney under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama; Peter J. Koutoujian, sheriff of Middlesex County, Massachusetts and former Massachusetts state lawmaker; Earnell R. Lucas, former Milwaukee County sheriff; Sarah R. Saldana, ICE director under President Barack Obama and former Texas district attorney; Joyce Vance, Alabama district attorney under President Barack Obama; and Ken Wainstein, Homeland Security Advisor under President George W. Bush, former first assistant attorney general for national security, Washington, D.C. attorney, FBI general counsel, and chief of staff to former director Robert Mueller.
The Biden administration tapped several of these advisory board members to serve: Granholm as secretary to the Department of Energy, Wainstein as head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. Others went on to assist Kamala Harris in her unsuccessful bid as the Democratic Party’s replacement nominee for the presidency, through endorsements, “Republicans for Harris,” or other efforts: Ayer, Rath, Weld, and Whitman.
Why does Mayes always look like she just crawled out of a tent? She must have a Sephora allergy.
First, this is some great reporting as it gives the audience insight into the extent leftists and globalists are willing to combine forces and resources to not only gain political control, but control over the citizens of this country by using lawfare. These defendants are just in the way. Mayes IS a useful tool of the left, of that Arizona voters can be sure. Like Hobbs and others, Mayes hasn’t represented the wellbeing of Arizona. Her efforts have been contrary to our wellbeing. Instead she has accepted direction and resources from a dark cabal of power brokers and their ilk. And she is proving her services are for sale. They just don’t get it-America and especially Arizona voters rejected their leftists & global one world type of governing for America on November 5th 2024. I believe these leftists and power hungry deep staters have exposed themselves and their truly evil intentions against us, the public. Btw Mayes- no one arrested in conjunction with J6 has been convicted of insurrection. So you are just a useless cog in the deep state wheel. America supports the new Trump administration and their responsibilities to WE THE PEOPLE.
Will Pam Bondi go after these traitors? The entire state of Arizona awaits January 21.
Oh I think the leftists get it… it just means they have to double-down on their agendas.
Ah, who would have ever guessed…..the membership of this group and its minions reads like a list of who’s who in the deep state uniparty. Plus as many others have posted the AZ GOP has no spine to do anything about it. Lawfare is still alive and kicking in blue states and believe me, AZ is now a blue state and getting bluer by the day.
AZ GOP will absolutely do nothing. Why keep voting for the AZ GOP?
Because it’s still better than the scum you voted for.
TIME magazine said SDUC was part of a “cabal of powerful people … They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it.” Actually, TIME got that reversed. SDUC was not fortifying the election; it was rigging it. Or, more appropriately, defending the rigging. But SDUC seems to be perfectly happy to have public confidence in free elections undermined in order to advance its left-wing looney agenda. Keep an eye out for the people named in this story as part of SDUC. They are the real danger to democracy and free elections.
Ooops, guess my fingers rebelled against the idea of SUDC. They insisted on typing SDUC. My mistake.
The Deep State át work. Of course, for the bumbling idiot voters it does not exist.
This is another reason that Arizona has become the laughing stock of the nation. The corrupt democrats who have taken over our government are inept, illegitimate, disrespectful, deceitful, and just plain stupid.
We are not, nor ever have been, a “blue” state. It’s time to take our state government back and Make Arizona Great Again!
would expect nothing less from corrupt fascist of democratic/liberal party
another great one is Hobby Nobby
I wonder if this dark money group can also make Mayes roll over, sit up and speak on command.
Under federal law, 18 USC 242, it is illegal for anyone under the color of law to deprive any person of the rights, privileges or immunities secured by the U.S. Constitution, and under 18 USC 241 it is illegal to conspire to violate such rights. It is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. This could be applied to local, state, or federal law enforcement or military personnel who abuse the rights of citizens. Every state has a similar law.
The key point is this: You not only have the right to disobey an illegal order, but you may also have the duty to apprehend the parties issuing such an order if such issuance is part of the commission of a crime.
Great post! Looks like you might know the law better than our State Attorney General who is supposed to enforce them.
Impeach her now but the legislature is too full of RINO’s to do anything
RICO.
Yes it was and IS election interference.
So Mayes has never tried any trials before being installed as AZ AG?
Now she “vows” to not enforce the laws from the Trump administration?
Impeach her!
Everything the DemoRatDemoRoaches accused Trump and Coconspirators of they were doing it themselves up to their eyeball😆 IMHO
Disgusting devils. All of them.
Dark money from the Dark net… tell me it’s not true!