A grand jury has indicted the two Cochise County Republican supervisors with election interference by holding up the canvassing of the 2022 Election votes in that AZ county. The supervisors, Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd, are charged with felony counts of conspiracy and interference with an election officer. Both are essentially election deniers who wanted a hand recount of the ballots because they did not trust the electronic voting machines. However, the real reason for their election interference was this was a protest over the vote counting and results in Maricopa County.
In other words, this was another Republican attempt at political hostage taking.
An Arizona grand jury has issued an indictment charging two Cochise County supervisors with interfering with the 2022 election related to their attempts to delay certification of the vote.
Supervisors Peggy Judd, 61, and Tom Crosby, 64, are each charged with felony counts of conspiracy and interference with an election officer.
“The repeated attempts to undermine our democracy are unacceptable,” said Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat whose office investigated and presented the case to the grand jury. “I took an oath to uphold the rule of law, and my office will continue to enforce Arizona’s elections laws and support our election officials as they carry out the duties and responsibilities of their offices.”...
Crosby and Judd — both of whom are Republicans — at first voted to delay the certification, which is also called a canvass. They said they wanted a meeting to hear evidence about county voting machines and whether those machines were properly certified. By that time, they had ignored repeated legal advice that their actions were illegal.
The supervisors were quickly sued, including by then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs. One lawsuit yielded a court order to certify the result, which the supervisors convened to do — though Crosby didn't show up. Ultimately, they voted 2-0 to send the results to Hobbs just four days before the statewide canvass.
The indictment alleges Crosby and Judd "knowingly interfered" with Hobbs' ability to complete the canvass "by preventing the Cochise County Board of Supervisors from canvassing the election within the time period required by law, and preventing the timely transmission of the county's returns to the Secretary of State's Office for inclusion in the statewide canvass."
These are felony counts, and if convicted, Crosby and Judd could face up to 2.5 years in prison.
So just who are Crosby and Judd? They are your typical Trump loving conspiracy theorists.
Peggy Judd: She attended 'Stop the Steal' rally near the U.S. Capitol with her family
Judd and her family attended the "Stop the Steal" rally not far from the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, traveling cross-country as part of a pro-Donald Trump caravan.
Judd speculated that the violence that erupted that day was a "false flag" event set up by Antifa. Antifa is a political movement of far-left militants who oppose neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations and other events.
She also compared the march to the Capitol to the freedom marches led by the late Martin Luther King Jr. She said she did not enter the Capitol and has told media outlets she was there more to watch over her grandchildren so her daughter and son-in-law could take part in the day's activities.
Her comments about the events of Jan. 6 drew so much condemnation that she shut down her Facebook page and said she felt "punished" and "defiled" by the media as well as by people in her community. Calls for her to resign went unheeded.
Judd, along with Crosby, voted in February to reject a $1.9 million federal grant for COVID-19 relief efforts. She claimed, without evidence, that the vaccine changed the virus, something that county health officials refuted in official testimony.
An opponent of the vaccine, she was unvaccinated and at one point contracted the virus.
As the 2022 election neared, Judd championed an effort to have the county hand count every ballot as a check on "our already perfect system" of machine tabulation. She envisioned a troop of volunteers would gather to count every race on every ballot - a micro version of the state Senate-ordered recount of the 2020 presidential election in Maricopa County that took months to complete and added votes for Joe Biden.
She persisted, even as county attorneys told the board the action was not allowed by law. Judd maintained it would be a way to assuage local skeptics and insisted there was no interest in changing the eventual vote outcome.
“This is important, probably one of the more important things that we have done," she said at an October meeting. “We need our county to be united and say ‘Yeah, awesome, it turned out great. Thank you.'”
Late last month, she told the New York Times the real reason for the certification delay was to protest the election process in Maricopa County. The concern over whether Cochise County tabulation machines were approved by an accredited laboratory, she said, was just a pretext to delay.
“It’s the only thing we have to stand on,” she said, referring to the voting machine claim.
Emphasis is mine.
Judd is a political extremist and a nut job.
Next, there is Crosby.
Tom Crosby: Former Border Patrol agent, Trump supporter, vaccine skeptic
During board discussions, Crosby has shown a disdain for advice from subject matter professionals, in contrast with Judd, who has sought to strike a more accommodating tone.
For example, in June, when a county attorney warned him he was flirting with a violation of the state Open Meeting Law, Crosby replied, "We'll see. You're not a judge."
In November, Crosby said he trusted the expertise of the members of the public who questioned the certifications of election tabulation machines as much as the expertise of the state elections director.
He joined Judd in rejecting the COVID-19 relief funding and has compared COVID-19 vaccines to Agent Orange, a herbicide used during the Vietnam War that has caused cancer in veterans.
Before living in Arizona, Crosby worked as a security guard at Naval Base Point Loma in San Diego and as a patrol officer on the San Diego trolley system, according to his own biography.
One of Crosby’s political allies is member of AZ fake electors, a man by the name of Robert Montgomery.
Anyway, these two loons are now in legal trouble because of their actions and because the voters of AZ elected a Democrat for state attorney general, Chris Mayes. It was Mayes who brought these charges to a grand jury. This shows, once again, if you want election integrity, Democrats need to support governors, state attorney generals, and secretary of states who will uphold election laws.