Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced on Wednesday that a state grand jury returned an indictment against 18 individuals associated with former US President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn Arizona’s election results in the 2020 presidential election. The indicted individuals face charges of fraud, forgery and conspiracy. The indictment names 11 of the 18 individuals, but seven names remain redacted and shielded from public knowledge.

The indictment centers around the individuals’ collective effort to “prevent the lawful transfer of the presidency to keep [Trump] in office against the will of Arizona’s voters.” The indictment charges the 11 named individuals with nine counts each for their involvement in the scheme, which the indictment claims “would have deprived Arizona voters of their right to vote and have their votes counted.”

The 11 named individuals include Kelli Ward, Tyler Bowyer, Nancy Cottle, Jacob Hoffman, Anthony Kern, James Lamon, Robert Montgomery, Samuel Moorhead, Lorraine Pellegrino, Gregory Safsten and Michael Ward. The other seven individuals have not yet been publicly identified, but based on media reports and details within the indictment, the other seven include Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, Boris Epshteyn, John Eastman, Jenna Ellis, Christina Bobb and Mike Roman. Trump is not included in the indictment, though there is speculation that he is referred to throughout the indictment as “Unindicted CoConspirator 1.”

The 58-page indictment alleges that the indicted individuals wrongly engaged in electing a false slate of presidential electors to represent Trump—despite Trump losing the state’s popular vote, and therefore its presidential electors. This was part of a larger scheme by Trump loyalists to have former Vice President Mike Pence reject the certification of current President Joe Biden’s electoral victory on January 6, 2021. The plan was for Pence to reject states’ real electoral slates. Pence was then to either “delay the proceeding and have individual state legislatures determine their electors, or have Congress resolve any claimed uncertainty about the validity of election results in Arizona and six other states in [Trump’s] favor.” If Congress were to do the latter, the false slate of electors would be needed.

Arizona prosecutors assert that the indicted individuals’ efforts to establish a false slate of electors were illegal. The indictment centers around American election law, including the federal Electoral Count Act of 1887 (ECA), which establishes the vote-counting procedures for the presidential eleciton.

In the US, would-be presidents are not selected based solely on the popular vote (the total amount of votes they receive across the country), but rather on how many electoral college votes they receive. In order to win the office of the presidency, a candidate must win 270 electoral college votes out of the total 538 votes available across all US states and territories.

Different states and territories determine how their electoral college votes are awarded based off of different systems, but Arizona awards its electoral college votes to whichever candidate wins the state’s popular vote. Arizona prosecutors allege that all 11 named individuals participated in a Republican-led effort to put forward an alternate slate of presidential for Trump even though the former president lost the state’s popular vote. As a result, the 11 individuals now face nine criminal counts each. The charges include conspiracy, fraudulent schemes and artifices, fraudulent schemes and practices, and five instances of forgery. All nine counts are felony offenses in the state of Arizona.

The indictment also details the actions undertaken in Arizona by the 18 indicted individuals in the months leading up to and following the November 3, 2020 presidential election, including multiple legal challenges and a pressure campaign. Neither the legal challenges nor the pressure campaign were ultimately successful.

Following the release of the indictment, Attorney General Mayes said, “I will not allow American democracy to be undermined. It is too important.” Mayes also stated that the investigation into efforts to undermine Arizona’s 2020 election process remains ongoing.