Is jail in the future for Arizona's 2020 election conspirators?

The failed coup attempt to keep former president Donald Trump in office was staged on several levels over a long period of time.

It wasn’t simply the day of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, which caused needless deaths and millions of dollars in damage.

There were also numerous, more subtle, just as sinister attacks on our democracy in states and counties all over the United States, including here.

A number of the Washington, D.C., rioters have been made to pay, some with lengthy jail sentences.

But it shouldn’t stop there.

Jack Smith is the new sheriff in town

I have a sense that special counsel Jack Smith, appointed by the attorney general to oversee the criminal investigations into the Jan. 6 insurrection as well as the holding of classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, won’t let it.

And it looks like his search for election fraud conspirators is taking him to election fraud central:Arizona.

Smith has subpoenaed officials in Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin for communications with Trump, his campaign and his allies in the days following Jan. 6.We already know a lot about the skullduggery and intimidation that went on in Arizona.

What about Arizona's fake electors?

The House select committee looking into the insurrection has said in court that Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward “aided a coup attempt.”

The committee was referring to Ward’s efforts to stop Maricopa County officials from counting ballots, as well as spouting false claims about voting machines.

Ward was also among the fake electors who tried to pawn themselves off as legitimate in order to give Joe Biden’s electoral college votes to Trump.

After the election:Is the mega MAGA Arizona GOP here to stay?

Reporting on that charade described how attorney Jack Wilenchik sent an email to Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn that reads, “We (Arizona Republicans) would just be sending in ‘fake’ electoral votes to Pence so that ‘someone’ in Congress can make an objection when they start counting votes, and start arguing that the ‘fake’ votes should be counted.”

Later, Wilenchik sent a follow-up email saying, “‘alternative’ votes is probably a better term than ‘fake’ votes,” followed by a smiley face emoji.

Paying the price for an attempted coup

There is also that enormous amount of strong-arming exerted on Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who refused to yield to the pressure.

When the minions of Trump could produce no evidence that there had been election fraud in Arizona, and when Bowers found none during his own investigation, he refused to ignore his oath, abandon the law and the Constitution, void the decision of voters and declare Trump the winner of the presidential election in Arizona.News reports also indicate that the Jan. 6 committee is going to be making criminal referrals to the justice department based on its lengthy investigation.

There’s a reason such things should happen, and it has nothing to do with what Trump calls a witch hunt or what his MAGA followers want to pretend didn’t happen. It’s about justice. It’s about trying to prevent what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, from happening again.

In order to do that, we must make sure that the price for attempting a coup is more than simply having it fail.

Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona election conspirators could (should) be headed for jail