'Major loss' for GOP official as marquee illegal voting case tossed due to entrapment

In a "major loss" for outgoing Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, a woman charged with voting illegally in the state has been acquitted based on an entrapment defense.

According to Signal Ohio, "A guilty verdict would have led to up to 18 months in prison for Maria Dearaujo, 63. But Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Chris Brown sided with the defense’s argument of entrapment. This generally entails a government actor leading a person into committing a crime they wouldn’t have otherwise committed."

Dearaujo, while now a naturalized U.S. citizen, was only a resident in 2018 when she voted — something she admitted to doing at trial. However, Brown noted, “The defendant testified she never thought about voting or intended to vote until a BMV clerk, a government official, told her to register. The court finds that Ms. Dearaujo has proven, by a preponderance of the evidence, an affirmative defense of entrapment.”

Further, Dearaujo, who barely speaks English, explained that once the secretary of state's office told her voting as a non-citizen was illegal, she immediately stopped doing so. Brown has previously called the indictment against her "fishy" and accused it of being political grandstanding earlier in the trial process.

This acquittal of Dearaujo, who came to the U.S. from Brazil in 1993, is a "major loss" for Yost, "who trumpeted the charges against Dearaujo and five others to reporters at a press conference in October 2024," said the report. "Yost’s announcement occurred in the early stages of his since-aborted 2026 gubernatorial run and amid a presidential election cycle dominated by eventual winner Donald Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric and spurious claims of widespread voter fraud from immigrants."

Yost recently announced he will be resigning from office, effective June 7, to take up a position with the anti-LGBTQ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom.