The Arizona Cardinals have the third pick when Round 2 gets underway at 4 p.m. (Arizona time). Whether they keep it is another matter. General Manager Monti Ossenfort said Thursday night that “our options are going to be plentiful for teams that are interested in coming up to us.”

“I feel really good. I feel really good,” Ossenfort said when asked about the prospects who could be available if he stays at No. 35. “We still have some players we really like up on the board. … We’ll be ready to pick a player at 35 and we’ll also have plenty of options in case we wanted to move around a little bit.”

Assuming they stay at 35, here are a few prospects who might be available that they should and likely will consider selecting:

DB Cooper DeJean, 6-1, 207, Iowa

The versatile DeJean can fit in anywhere in an NFL defensive secondary. He projects as a bigger nickel safety, but the Cardinals could play him as an outside cornerback, put him in the slot, or use him as a straight safety. He’s a fast, hard-hitting tackler with 41 tackles last season, two interceptions and five passes defensed. He’s also a very good punt returner, having returned 31 punts for 406 yards, including one for a touchdown.

CB Kool-Aid McKinstry, 5-11, 199, Alabama

It’s no secret the Cardinals would like to add another cornerback after signing free agent Sean Murphy-Bunting to a three-year contract. McKinstry entered the 2023 season as a favorite to be the first cornerback selected in this year’s draft, but he’d be a good catch now that he’s slipped out of the first round. He had 15 passes defensed in 2022 and although that number dropped to seven last year, he’s a sound press corner who started 33 games (93 career tackles, two interceptions). Like DeJean, he’s also returned punts – 35 of them for 418 yards (11.9-yard average).

CB Ennis Rakestraw Jr., 6-0, 188, Missouri

NFL Network draft analysts had Rakestraw Jr. rated as the fifth-best cornerback in the draft and the 32^nd-ranked prospect overall. He has decent length, very good start-and-stop ability and he’s solid against the run. He had 107 tackles in his four-year career at Missouri, including eight tackles for loss, and had 12 of his 24 passes defensed as a junior in 2022.

Here is a 2024 NFL draft pick-by-pick breakdown for the Arizona Cardinals:

Round 1 (No. 4 overall)

Round 1 (27, from Texans)

Round 2 (35)

Round 3 (66)

Round 3 (71, from Titans)

Round 3 (90, from Texans)

Round 4 (104)

Round 5 (138)

Round 5 (162, from Texans)

Round 6 (186, from Vikings)

Round 7 (226, from Giants)

Arizona Cardinals’ recent top draft picks

• 2023 (No. 6 overall): Paris Johnson Jr., OT, Ohio State
• 2022 (No. 55 overall): Trey McBride, TE, Colorado State
• 2021 (No. 22 overall): Caleb Farley, CB, Virginia Tech
• 2020 (No. 29 overall): Isaiah Wilson, OT, Georgia
• 2019 (No. 19 overall): Jeffery Simmons, DT, Mississippi State

Previous drafts: 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020

A grand jury in Arizona has returned an indictment for several close associates of former President Donald Trump as well as lower-level individuals who served as false electors in Arizona during the 2020 presidential election. The Office of Attorney General Kris Mayes has charged all of them with a conspiracy under Arizona state law to overturn the popular vote in the state.

The list of indicted co-defendants includes seven national figures: Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn, Mike Roman, Jenna Ellis, and Christina Bobb.

The 11 other co-defendants are all the false electors in the 2020 election. That list notably includes Kelli Ward, who served as the chair of the Arizona Republican Party during the 2020 presidential election.

Notably, like Georgia, criminal trials in Arizona can be publicly broadcast.

Some highlights follow.

The Conspicuous Absence of Donald Trump

The Arizona indictment raises a question. How is it possible that Trump’s two alter egos have been indicted but the former president—the ego in that equation—has not?

The two alter egos are Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Trump’s absence from the indicted co-defendants list is all the more puzzling since Trump is identifiable as “Unindicted Coconspirator 1” in the attorney general’s court filings. Coincidentally, on Wednesday, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office testified in that state’s court that Trump, Meadows, and Giuliani are “unindicted co-conspirators” in the Michigan state prosecution of false electors.

A great deal of evidence shows that Meadows and Giuliani helped lead the multipronged efforts to overturn the election, acting on behalf of Trump.

Giuliani

The federal indictment of Trump, for example, refers to Giuliani as “Co-Conspirator 1,” including for his allegedly helping orchestrate—on behalf of Trump—the false electors scheme across the seven swing states, including Arizona. The federal indictment also states that Trump worked directly with Giuliani in pressuring Arizona state officials to overturn the popular vote, including calling the Republican Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives Rusty Bowers, in which they “made knowingly false claims of election fraud aimed at interfering with the ascertainment of and voting by Arizona’s electors.”

Meadows

The Jan. 6 House Select Committee final report has the greatest details of Meadows’ deep involvement in the false electors scheme on behalf of Trump. For Meadows, indicted in Georgia, his own court filings in that state claim—or admit—that he was acting in service of the then president.

One can only speculate as to why Trump might be excluded from but the other two men included in the Arizona indictment. One reason might have to do with direct evidence for Meadows and Giuliani that is lacking for Trump—especially as the former president acted in part through them as intermediaries and conduits. Another reason may be the exercise of “prosecutorial discretion.” Yet another could be that prosecutors submitted the question to the jury but an insufficient number of jurors approved of charging the former president. Or it could be some other reason entirely.

Tuesday’s indictment may not be the final word on whether Trump will be indicted in Arizona. Another shoe may have yet to drop. But the current situation cries out for an explanation of how Trump’s two key agents—Giuliani and Meadows—are included in the list of indicted individuals but Trump himself is not.

The Conspicuous Absence of Kenneth Chesebro

Kenneth Chesebro has properly been called “a chief architect” of the false electors scheme. He is identifiable as Co-Conspirator 5 in the federal indictment of Trump, and he has pleaded guilty in the prosecution in Fulton County, Georgia.

Chesebro has so far escaped prosecution in other states where false electors are under indictment. His protection from prosecution appears to be on the basis that he “cooperated” with those investigations. However, recent investigative reporting by CNN and others has revealed that Chesebro apparently made false statements to state prosecutors in Michigan and Nevada while feigning cooperation with their respective criminal investigations of false electors. (See also this analysis of flaws with his proffer agreement in Georgia.)

That all is now fairly well known to close observers of these cases. Why, then, the Arizona indictment excludes Chesebro is a mystery. Prosecutors in Michigan and Nevada have decided not to seek indictments of anyone at the national level and instead focused only on false electors in their states. But in Arizona that’s different, as the prosecutors have now charged several out-of-state individuals who were involved in the nationally coordinated effort to overturn the election results. But not Chesebro. Earlier reports were that Chesebro was “cooperating” with the Arizona prosecutors, and that may explain it.

The Indictment of Boris Epshteyn and Christina Bobb

Two new figures have been added to the list of Trump’s associates now under indictment for alleged efforts to overturn the presidential election: Boris Epshteyn and Christina Bobb.

In the federal indictment, it appears that Epshteyn may be unindicted “Co-Conspirator 6” (see this analysis by the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan, and Luke Broadwater). In the Fulton County indictment, previous analysis at Just Security identified Epshteyn as most likely one of the unindicted co-conspirators (“Individual 3”).

A Potential Trump Presidency and Pressure on Defendants to Flip

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Criminal defendants in the Arizona 2020 election interference prosecution, as well as elsewhere, like Fulton County, Georgia, may have reasons to flip and cooperate with prosecutors due to the prospect of a Trump presidency.

A president cannot issue pardons for state crimes, and his or her control over the Department of Justice does not extend to state law enforcement authorities. The state-level prosecutions of false electors and other Trump associates—in Arizona and elsewhere—will accordingly proceed whether or not Trump wins election. But he himself has a high likelihood of being deemed immune (by the Supreme Court if it comes to that) from state and local criminal prosecutions while in office. In other words, co-defendants and co-conspirators may be left holding the bag. That dawning reality may create incentives for some of these individuals to cooperate with law enforcement authorities sooner than later.