(Los Angeles) Former Donald Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani appeared in court in Arizona for the first time on Tuesday, accused along with 17 others of trying to overturn the results of the 2020 US presidential election in this southwestern state won by Joe Biden.
Published at 4:30 p.m.
In April, Arizona courts indicted 18 people alleging a plot to assign electoral votes to Donald Trump, who are formally responsible for appointing the President of the United States.
Arizona, a key state in the current presidential campaign between the same two men, was ultimately narrowly won by Joe Biden.
Rudy Giuliani, who appeared Tuesday by videoconference, denied the accusations. In particular, he denies having disseminated false information about supposed electoral fraud in Arizona and having put pressure on elected officials to change the result of the election.
According to the indictment, this former mayor of New York also encouraged Republican voters in Arizona and other states to declare Donald Trump victorious when he was not.
Others charged include Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, lawyers Jenna Ellis and John Eastman, and campaign advisor Boris Epshteyn.
Several of these people are also indicted in Georgia, alongside Donald Trump himself this time, as part of one of four criminal trials targeting the former president.
Two other states have filed lawsuits against people suspected of trying to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, Michigan and Nevada.
The 2020 election was marked by chaos in the weeks following the announcement of Donald Trump’s defeat. These tensions peaked on January 6, 2021 with the assault on the Capitol in Washington by supporters of the Republican billionaire. The latter still refuses to recognize his defeat almost four years later.
