Government

Former AZ AG Made One Or Two Oopsies In Public Comments About Election Fraud

The first one was saying that there was evidence of election fraud.

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700517In August of 2022, Arizona’s sitting Attorney General Mark Brnovich took less than 18 percent of the vote in the Republican senate primary. After failing to use his office to overturn the results of the 2020 election, the AG got crosswise with Donald Trump, despite his best efforts to keep the dream alive for the MAGA faithful who believe that the state’s 11 electoral votes were stolen from their God king by dint of a massive fraud that was just about to be discovered. Trump kneecapped Brnovich in the primary, endorsing Blake Masters, a replicant programmed by billionaire Peter Thiel, who never had a chance against incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Kelly.

Today, Brnovich finds himself in the spotlight again — and not because his political prospects are magically revived. Instead, the current Secretary of State is calling for him to be disbarred, as Brnovich’s successor in the AG’s office releases evidence that he actively suppressed proof there was no substantial fraud in 2020 which could have impacted the outcome of the election. Indeed, Brnovich went further, suggesting in public, including in a letter to the state senate president, that his office had actually substantiated the false election fraud claims.

So … not so much with that whole candor to a tribunal stuff.

Amid massive public outcry fanned by the former president and his minions, AG Brnovich dedicated upwards of 10,000 hours of government time by more than 60 staffers to exhaustively chasing down every stupid, anonymous Kraken claim about election fraud in 2020. The culmination was a March 2022 report demonstrating that there was never anything there.

Take for instance this passage in an Executive Summary from September describing a meeting with former state Rep. Mark Finchem, who publicly claimed that more than 30,000 fraudulent ballots were cast in Pima County:

Mr. Finchem did not repeat those allegations, specifically stating he did not have any evidence of fraud and he did not wish to take up our time. He did provide 4 ballots that he said was evidence of a flawed process for mailing and counting ballots. The ballots had been mailed to prior residents of the address on file, the residents had moved, and the ballots cannot be forwarded by the postal service. The ballots were not counted and were unopened, and the [Maricopa County Recorders Office] did not have a record of the residents’ change of address. Mr. Finchem did not have any further information and left the meeting in relatively short order.

Finchem, a member of the Oath Keepers militia, won the Republican primary but lost his bid for secretary of state in November. Naturally he claims his victory was stolen by dint of election fraud.

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The AG’s office made similarly short work of ballot stuffing claims by rightwing outlet True the Vote (TTV), which were later publicized by agitpropagandist Dinesh D’Souza in his film “2000 Mules”:

TTV did not provide any evidence of ballot stuffing, to include videos showing ballot stuffing; they did not provide any evidence or confirmation there were ballot boxes at the locations said to be drop boxes, and they did not provide any information that would identify the owners/holders of the mobile devices. Agents asked Ms. Engelbrecht and Mr. Phillips for the information to support their assertions and allow us to review it. They provided agents with a 3 page hypothesis of what they believe could have been election fraud, but there was no supporting documentation or evidence to support their hypothesis. TTV also alleged they had identified 243 individuals who were committing ballot stuffing in Arizona. TTV also stated they had identified the location of “stash houses” were ballots were being stored/collected. They promised they would provide the information to us, but to this point, they have not done so despite repeated requests to do so from our office.

The AG’s office completed the report in plenty of time to allay fears — and deter baseless fear mongering — about the 2022 election. Instead, Brnovich suppressed the evidence, putting out multiple letters implying that his office had found evidence of serious fraud. A draft of a letter to Senate President Karen Fann, the major driver behind the infamous Maricopa County “audit” performed by the Cyber Ninjas firm, shows Brnovich’s own staff correcting his false assertions about the 2020 election in real time.

For instance, Brnovich wrote: “Our overall assessment is that the current election system in Maricopa County involving the verification and handling of early ballots is broken.”

In fact, that was not the “overall assessment,” as his own office wrote in a proposed edit: “SIS staff concluded the MCRO followed its policy/procedures as they relate to signature verification; we did not uncover any criminality or fraud having been committed in this area during the 2020 general election).”

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Brnovich also implied that Maricopa County elections officials had been uncooperative or even deceptive with investigators, something contradicted by his own staff in the edits he ignored.

In the event, the Fann letter went out virtually unchanged, while the report itself stayed buried until today. And even as he left office, Brnovich continued to push conspiracy theories about nefarious goings on in the state’s most populous county, treating a printer error on election day as a potential violation of the law in a November letter to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.

All the while, elections officials were bombarded with hatred and death threats, thanks to the lies fomented by Brnovich and his allies. Today Maricopa County Elections Supervisor Clint Hickman put out a furious statement denouncing Brnovich’s duplicity:

For almost three years, this County has answered questions about the 2020 election. For three years we have provided proof from independent investigators that it was run as well as you could run an election under current laws. For three years, my colleagues have been called traitors, cheaters, and liars…and those are just the names I can print.  It has been absolute hell on all of us, but I would do it again in a second and I believe that every member of this Board would do it again because all of us stayed within the law.  We didn’t try to venture outside of it so we could be called “HERO” to the same people who have ridiculed us at every step.

Unfortunately, the ridicule and threats have not only been directed at my Board and our Recorder, but also at our own election workers. They have made good people scared to work in elections, and they’ve even scared people away from voting the way that Arizonans have voted for decades.

As Hickman points out, these lies had a corrosive effect on civic unity, eroding voters faith in a cornerstone of democracy. Or, as current Secretary of State Adrian Fontes put it, “I’m angry for the people that got hurt because Mark Brnovich was too much of a freakin’ coward to tell the truth.”

Meanwhile, Brnovich defends his conduct as essential to promoting public faith in elections.

“Where we were able to debunk rumors and conspiracies, we did so,” he said. “Nevertheless, we also identified areas we believe the Legislature and county officials should address to ensure confidence in future elections.”

Well … he would, wouldn’t he.

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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