Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sam Myers said on Monday during a hearing in Attorney General Kris Mayes’ prosecution of the 2020 alternate electoral slate for Trump and their associates that there were enough grounds in the defendants’ motions to dismiss to likely dismiss the prosecutions due to violating the First Amendment. Myers, who previously clerked for a Democratic Senator, and who was appointed to the bench by Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano, made the decision without hearing oral arguments due to the strength of the defendants’ arguments, he said.
Myers was addressing motions to dismiss based on the state’s anti-SLAPP law filed by former State Senator Anthony Kern and Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Several of the other defendants filed similar motions, including Trump’s former attorney and constitutional legal scholar John Eastman and former Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward. State Senate President Warren Petersen (R-Mesa) and then-House Speaker Ben Toma filed an Amicus Curiae brief in support of Ward’s motion.
