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Times of San Diego
Arizona Grand Jury Given No Evidence of Christina Bobb Crimes, Lawyer Contends
By Ken Stone,
1 day ago
Christina Bobb is now using her Maricopa County booking photo on her X account. Times of San Diego photo illustration
Election-denier Christina Bobb was indicted in the Arizona fake electors case despite no evidence of criminal acts given to a grand jury, her lawyer argued in a brief filed Friday.
Christina Bobb and James Lamon briefs filed Sept. 6, 2024. (PDF)
The lawyer, Thomas Jacobs, said Bobb — the former San Diegan and OAN correspondent who pleaded not guilty — also can prove she’s the victim of “political prosecution.”
The Tucson-based lawyer says Bobb was targeted for expressing her opinions — including via tweets — about what she considers a stolen presidential election.
Arizona prosecutors “in no way responded to the fact that the grand jury didn’t even know what to do with Christina after nearly three months of testimony,” Jacobs wrote Superior Court Judge Bruce Cohen.
According to hearing transcripts obtained by Times of San Diego, Jacobs quoted a grand juror as saying: “I just threw her name up there. I didn’t know where else to put her for now.”
Jacobs said: “At times during the grand jury proceeding, the grand jury indicated that they didn’t really understand why Ms. Bobb was even in there.”
By March 2024 — two months into the probe of the fake electors scheme — the grand jury had heard so little about Bobb that they “apparently forgot who she was and asked Detective Ignowski to remind them,” Jacobs said.
And the jury of Arizona citizens allegedly was merely told: “She was in deep with this whole scheme, period.”
Jacobs said three grand jurors voted not to indict Bobb. And in his 34-year legal career, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a good trial result for the state on a case like this where three grand jurors wouldn’t even come up with a bill.”
At an August 28 hearing, moreover, Jacobs told Cohen that prosecutors even made a “bald face lie” that Bobb came to Arizona during the events in question — between Nov. 3, 2020, and Jan. 6, 2021.
“She was in fact back east with COVID,” Jacobs said. “And if this goes to an evidentiary hearing … she will certainly bring those medical records to demonstrate that.”
Later, Nick Klingerman of the Arizona Attorney General’s Office pushed back.
“Saying that she was never in Arizona and somehow I presented false or misleading evidence to the grand jury, we have never, until Mr. Jacobs said that, heard evidence that she wasn’t in Arizona,” said Criminal Division Chief Klingerman.
He said Bobb indeed was in Arizona well before visits later in 2021, contending that “just a few weeks ago we interviewed [former GOP Senate President] Karen Fann who told us she thought Christina Bobb was in a meeting with her.”
Late August hearing transcripts in Maricopa Superior Court (PDF)
The judge, in any case, said Bobb’s whereabouts aren’t a concern for him.
“I can assure Ms. Bobb and everybody else that whether she was or was not here has nothing to do with the issue I have to decide,” said Cohen, whose current term ends Jan. 6, 2025. (He can run for re-election.)
Prosecutor Klingerman also denied claims that Bobb was indicted for being a journalist.
“We have emails from her too,” he told the court, about Bobb’s involvement, and phone calls about supposed evidence of election fraud in an effort to get the state Legislature to adopt the GOP elector slates.
“And Mr. Giuliani in his deposition said that she was part of his legal team. And I just talked about his acts and that she helped implement it.”
In fact, after the April 23 indictment, Giuliani said on his podcast that Bobb was “the main person in Arizona,” said Klingerman — although he conceded such statements might not be admitted as evidence at trial.
“She’s indicted for being … on [Giuliani’s] legal team, not being a journalist,” the prosecutor said, later noting Twitter direct messages such as ones with Jenna Ellis in November 2020:
“Hi, Christina. The legal team is wondering if you are available to help. Can you contact me at jellis@donaldtrump.com with your best contact info?
“And then Christina Bobb responds, ‘Sorry. I just saw this. So excited to be on the team. Keeping it under wraps though. Can update you next time we talk.'”
Anti-SLAPP Proof at Issue
Before Cohen is another question raised by defendants Jim Lamon (one of 11 fake electors charged), Giuliani and former Chapman University law professor John Eastman.
He’s to decide whether Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes violated the state’s anti-SLAPP law intended to protect defendants, including those criminally charged, from being targeted for exercising their First Amendment rights.
In Lamon’s brief, also filed Friday, his attorneys argue that Mayes had no motive “in this unprecedented political circus of a case other than to deter, retaliate, inhibit and interfere with constitutionally protected rights.”
Lamon insists that he’s established prima facie proof of political prosecution — solid evidence “on the face of it.”
Bobb attorney Jacobs also argued that Bobb was no more guilty than about a dozen other people “who were not indicted but who were mentioned in the indictment” and cross-examined by grand jurors.
He noted that Jenna Ellis, Bobb’s fellow Donald Trump attorney, had “little to none” involvement in the case.
“Christina Bobb had even less involvement in these activities then Jenna Ellis, who was just recently dismissed [by prosecution motion],” Jacobs told the court.
Jacobs himself was briefly on the hot seat during a three-day hearing last week in Maricopa County court.
Prosecutors told the judge that Jacobs, against a court order, had made public the names of several grand jurors in a court filing, along with transcripts of grand jury proceedings.
Said Judge Cohen: “I am concerned, Mr. Jacobs, about that filing,” which Times of San Diego has been told included only two last names of grand jurors.
Replied Jacobs via a remote Teams hookup to the court: “Yeah. I’m sort of reluctant to make statements in the court. I do have an explanation for why that was filed, and it was inadvertent.”
Jacobs said he prepared redacted and unredacted drafts of a filing — “and I sent the wrong one to my secretary to file.”
Via email to Times of San Diego, Jacobs said the incident has vanished from the news, “but I received a handful of threatening phone calls after the matter was reported.”
He said the court “accepted that this was simply a clerical error and that it was caught quickly and did not reach the public eye. As I explained, it takes about 10-14 days for a filing to become available to the public after filing,” said to have been Aug. 19.
No Sanctions Considered
At the hearing, Judge Cohen observed that “nobody was asking for any sanctions for this, and I was not considering it.”
Bobb — one of 18 defendants in the case — allegedly lobbied Arizona’s Republican legislators after the 2020 presidential election to disregard the popular vote in Arizona.
“She additionally helped organize the false Arizona Republican electors’ votes on December 14, 2020,” according to an indictment charging her with conspiracy, fraud and forgery.
On July 1, Bobb filed a motion to dismiss her indictment in the Arizona case — where trial is set for January 2026.
At the August hearing, attorney Jacobs said evidence exists of an “improper motivation to try to keep [Bobb] from saying bad things about the Arizona election, lobbying Congress, participating in the Trump campaign, doing these things that they didn’t like she was doing.”
Jacobs added: “If she had been someone else like one of the people who wasn’t indicted, … she wouldn’t have been indicted if she didn’t have this profile.
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