Arizona Grand Jury Wanted to Indict Trump in Fake Electors Case

A state grand jury in Arizona that charged 18 people this spring in a scheme that sought to overturn Donald J. Trump’s 2020 election loss wanted to indict him, too, according to court papers released on Tuesday.

But prosecutors, the papers said, recommended that Mr. Trump should not be charged, citing a Justice Department policy that discourages bringing state and federal cases against the same defendant that are largely based on similar facts.

The court papers, filed in Phoenix by the Arizona attorney general’s office, revealed for the first time that the grand jurors investigating allegations of interference in that state’s election seriously considered bringing charges against Mr. Trump. Some of the grand jurors even appeared to be upset when a state prosecutor suggested they should not.

“I have not recommended that in the draft indictment, despite clear indications from you all that there’s an interest in pursuing a charge against him,” the papers quoted the unnamed prosecutor as saying of Mr. Trump.

“I know that may be disappointing to some of you,” the prosecutor added.

When the Arizona case was filed in April, it accused some of Mr. Trump’s top allies of conspiring with a group of Republican operatives to create a slate of fake electors who declared he had won the race in Arizona when the actual winner was Joseph R. Biden Jr. Among those charged were Rudolph W. Giuliani, who had been Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, and Mark Meadows, his former White House chief of staff.

Though Mr. Trump was never charged in the case and his name did not appear in the 58-page indictment, he was mentioned several times as Unindicted Co-Conspirator 1, described as “a former president of the United States who spread false claims of election