Judge: No evidence of political bias on grand jury in Arizona fake electors case

The judge in Arizona’s fake electors case again rejected a claim that political bias motivated a grand jury to indict defendants in the case.

Rudy Giuliani, who was a personal attorney to former President Donald Trump, asked the court to give him access to information about the grand jury, arguing it could show that grand jurors’ political ideology factored into the indictment that alleged the 18 defendants attempted to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Bruce Cohen already denied that request last month, writing that Giuliani “alleges not one scintilla of information that would support this claim.”

Cohen also noted that the grand jury that indicted Giuliani and his co-defendants was not empaneled specifically to hear that case.

“This was not a special grand jury to address the charges brought against these various defendants," Cohen wrote in the Sept. 30 order. “Rather, it was a sitting grand jury who was not selected for this case or any other specific case.”

In a new order issued on Oct. 16, Cohen said Giuliani’s attorney still has not provided evidence that political bias tainted the indictment.

“When pressed by this court during oral argument, counsel for Defendant Giuliani acknowledged that there was no underlying factual support for the claim,” Cohen wrote. “Rather, he seemed to assert that since there was no information about whether political party information of grand jurors was known at the time of summoning, that lack of knowledge formed a basis to investigate whether that information was possibly available during the summoning process.”

But Cohen, in the September order, still asked the Arizona Attorney General’s office to provide information about whether information about a potential jurors’ political affiliation was available to the grand jury commissioner charged with summoning jurors.

The Attorney General’s office provided an affidavit from the grand jury commissioner, who stated “political party affiliation information as to potential grand jurors was not known or available to the grand jury commissioner or representatives when summoning a potential pool for the 93rd Grand Jury.”