The circus in Arizona continues... Arizona's Election Integrity Unit under scrutiny after latest bombshell https://www.rawstory.com/arizona-s-election-integrity-unit-after-latest-bombshell/
The only fraud was those covering covering up there was no election fraud. Time to disbar the criminals. Fontes says Brnovich should be disbarred for withholding Arizona election investigation findings https://ktar.com/story/5457682/font...ding-arizona-election-investigation-findings/ Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes believes Mark Brnovich should be disbarred after documents released Wednesday revealed the former state attorney general kept complete findings of the 2020 election investigation under wraps. “Yes, he should be disbarred,” Fontes told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Gaydos and Chad Show. Fontes, a Democrat, was the recorder in 2020 for Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous county and the epicenter of claims of election fraud. Current Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes released documents showing Brnovich had — but withheld — the complete investigation findings while he was attorney general and running for Senate last year, even after he lost the Republican primary in August. The documents shoot down a litany of election conspiracy greatest hits, including false claims of bamboo ballots, large numbers of dead voters and tabulation machines being hooked up to the internet. “I’m angry for the people that got hurt because Mark Brnovich was too much of a freakin’ coward to tell the truth,” Fontes said. Officials from both parties ripped Brnovich on Wednesday for keeping the findings private. Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Clint Hickman, a Republican, said he was “absolutely disgusted” that Brnovich wasn’t more forthright about what his investigators found. “There’s a lot of people that don’t realize the personal tragedy that this has really foisted on a lot of folks,” Fontes said. “We’ve had people suffering death threats because of this. We’ve had people leave their careers because of the harassment and intimidation that they suffered fueled by the lie, fueled by what Brnovich could have stopped.” Brnovich responded to the criticism, saying he was “proud of the work our office did with the election integrity unit.” “While subjected to severe criticism from all sides of the political spectrum during the course of our investigations, we did our due diligence to run all complaints to ground,” Brnovich said in a statement. “Where we were able to debunk rumors and conspiracies, we did so. Nevertheless, we also identified areas we believe the Legislature and county officials should address to ensure confidence in future elections.”
The Arizona circus just keeps getting stranger. Arizona GOP 'voter fraud' witness implicates Trump-loving lawmaker in drug cartel bribe claims https://www.rawstory.com/arizona-republicans-2659474520/ A witness called by Arizona Republicans to push baseless claims of mass voter fraud has now implicated two Republican state senators in a scheme that she says involves taking bribes from drug cartels. The Arizona Republic reports that Jacqueline Breger, the witness who last week accused multiple state officials of taking bribes in exchange for manipulating statewide elections, was actually relaying the theories of a man named John Thaler, a one-time lawyer from Scottsdale whose law license has been suspended. The Republic reached out to Thaler to ask him to elaborate on his claims about Arizona officials taking bribes, and he said that indicated that Arizona State Sens. Wendy Rogers and Ken Bennett both possessed "documents that meet the characteristics of those documents used in the money laundering and bribery schemes." Thaler offered no concrete proof of his claims when asked by the newspaper, however. Bennett was the Republican state senator who last week cut off Breger as she was accusing two other Republican officials, Mesa Mayor John Giles and Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, of taking bribes. Rogers, meanwhile, is one of former President Donald Trump's biggest loyalists in the state and has been at the forefront of pushing false claims about the 2020 election being "stolen" from him. The Arizona Republic notes that, even though Rogers did not directly address Thaler's claims, she did put out a statement expressing regret about the bribery claims being aired in a public hearing. "Late Sunday night Rogers... issued a press release stating that the claims made by Breger should have been turned over to law enforcement 'and not brought before the Legislature,'" the publication writes. "She added that 'none of the people named' in the presentation are facing charges and that even if allegations are proven factual, the Legislature isn't the venue to try the case."
Not surprising anyone, election deniers also enjoy beating their wives. Top Arizona GOPer Was Involved in 2nd Domestic Violence Incident, Police Reports Show Sonny Borrelli, the head of Arizona’s Senate Republicans, called 911 during a 2004 incident that left his then-wife in the hospital covered in blood. https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-a...omestic-violence-incident-police-reports-show
The Arizona circus goes on and on... AZ Election Lawyer Sanctioned After Bragging In Court That He Was Too Old To Care About Sanctions Play stupid games ... https://abovethelaw.com/2023/03/az-...-that-he-was-too-old-to-care-about-sanctions/ Yesterday, a Big Lie dead ender in Arizona got sanctioned, along with their lawyer. Nope, not Kari Lake … another one. “Arizona’s courts have emphasized that sanctions should be awarded only in rare cases, so as not to discourage legitimate challenges,” wrote Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Melissa Iyer Julian, before dropping the hammer on failed Republican Secretary of State candidate Mark Finchem and his counsel Daniel McCauley. “This is such a case.” Finchem, a former state representative and a member of the Oath Keepers militia who traveled to DC on January 6, 2021, claims both that the presidential election was stolen and that the Capitol Riot was instigated by Antifa. His lawyer Daniel McCauley appears to be a solo practitioner from Cave Creek with little to no election law experience before 2022, when he represented the Cochise County Board of Supervisors as it refused to comply with its statutory obligation to certify the midterm election returns. McCauley apparently bumbled into and out of federal court on the way to earning his clients a referral for prosecution from the Secretary of State. And if you’re guessing that this dynamite combo was going to go down like peanut butter and broken glass, you are correct. The complaint itself is almost English … if you round up and squint. Here’s a bit where the plaintiff freestyles about printer failures at polling stations in Maricopa County, which resulted in ballots being fed to a tabulation machine offsite. Egads!: None of these voters came to the polling place for such an unreliable and unprecedented voting experience. Each such voter was deprived of personally registering their vote – to the point of inconveniencing themselves by traveling to a polling location and often waiting an hour or more, sometimes much more, when mail-in voting with serious chain of custody flaws was available. More than that, a process that should be sacrosanct oozes impropriety. After inveighing at length about several terrible hours when he was locked out of his Twitter account — DAMN YOU, DEEP STATE! — Finchem finally got to the gravamen of his complaint: the wrong person signed the machines’ accreditation slip, making the ballots cast on them invalid and cruelly robbing the Republican candidate of 80,000 votes. The problem with this claim was twofold. First, the machines were indeed appropriately certified, as the Secretary of State proved almost immediately in her motion to dismiss citing publicly available data. Second, Finchem lost the race by 120,000 votes. So even if his complaint was correct in every respect — and it was not — it would have made no difference to the outcome of the election. The case was dismissed in December, after which the defendants, former Secretary of State now Governor Katie Hobbs and current Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, moved for sanctions. And yesterday they got them, at least insofar as the plaintiff and his counsel will now be on the hook for opposing counsel’s fees. But Judge Julian’s order describes McCauley’s conduct in this case as downright bizarre. Finchem’s counsel apparently “admitted at oral argument that he had not reviewed the data provided” which would have proven the accreditation claims in the complaint were “groundless.” Nor does he appear to have consulted the necessary expert to determine if 80,000 is greater or less than 120,000. The court excoriated the attorney for entirely ignoring the relevant legal standard for an election contest in Arizona and for “admittedly decid[ing] to file this case after ‘a number of experienced litigators’ declined to,” a fact the court suggests “should have prompted further investigation into the contest’s validity.” And it did not get better from there. Apparently McCauley admitted in open court that he’d taken a wholly cavalier attitude toward the case, since he was nearing retirement and didn’t much care if he got disbarred. That McCauley had some awareness that this case lacked merit is apparent by his own comments during oral argument whereby he expressed being less at risk of being disbarred as a result of the filing given his impending retirement. This too supports sanctions as it demonstrates a conscious decision to pursue the matter despite appreciating that the contest had no legal merit. Unsurprisingly, this failed to impress Judge Julian, who made Finchem and McCauley jointly liable for the defendants’ fees. But perhaps it will impress Alan Dershowitz, who now ranks only second in embarrassing sanctions awards among attorneys earning such an honor in the 2022 midterms. Silver linings!
The wild insanity in Arizona continues... Infamous AZ election denier airs wild conspiracy theory about Mormons and Mexican drug lords https://www.rawstory.com/liz-harris/ Republican Rep. Liz Harris doesn’t believe that any “direct criminal allegations” were made during a committee meeting she organized wherein a speaker accused the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and a laundry list of local and state officials of being involved in an illicit money laundering scheme orchestrated by the Sinaloa drug cartel. For about 90 minutes on Thursday, the state House of Representatives Ethics Committee questioned Harris about the Feb. 23 meeting, in an attempt to determine if she knew in advance that the speaker planned to spread wild and unfounded allegations. The Ethics Committee adjourned Thursday afternoon to look over the evidence and deliberate what action it would take, if any, and Committee Chairman Joseph Chaplik, R-Scottsdale, did not indicate when the committee would reconvene to announce its decision. House Democrats on March 6, led by Rep. Stephanie Stahl, asked that the Ethics Committee formally censure Harris for inviting Gilbert insurance agent Jacqueline Breger to speak during the joint Senate and House elections committee meeting on Feb. 23. Breger accused the LDS church and other officials, including Gov. Katie Hobbs and Republican House Speaker Ben Toma, of taking part in a housing deed and money laundering scheme alongside the Mexican drug cartel. For more than 40 minutes on Feb. 23, Breger made salacious claims about the various officials and members of the legislature, accusing them of election fraud in addition to money laundering. To back up her claims, Breger pointed to a book by her boyfriend, John Thaler, and a slew of documents upon which he apparently used to inform his book. On Thursday, Harris said that Stahl had not reviewed any of the evidence of Breger’s claims before she made an ethics complaint, adding that she believes Stahl cannot prove that any of the information presented during the meeting was untrue. The Arizona Mirror reviewed the “evidence” of the scam that Breger and Thaler shared and found none of it to be credible. In many cases, allegedly “fake” people listed on supposedly phony deeds were real, and so-called falsified deeds attributed to elected officials were merely filed by people with similar names. Fringe conservative media outlets helped Breger and Thaler’s unfounded claims to spread like wildfire across the country after the meeting, prompting many Republicans in the legislature to distance themselves from the testimony, including Toma and Senate President Warren Peterson. Harris told the Ethics Committee that she had no idea that Breger was going to make such outlandish claims, adding that she’d never seen the list of elected officials supposedly involved in the scheme until that day. “I was shocked when I saw the names listed,” Harris said, adding that she was “extremely upset” that Toma was included in the list. Harris said that she told Breger prior to the meeting that Breger could not to impugn the members of the legislature or bring up claims regarding any religious institutions during her testimony. Both Breger and Thaler had previously made unfounded claims that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was involved in the scandal. But screenshots of a text message thread among Harris, Breger and an unidentified person who is assumed to be John Thaler, were delivered anonymously to legislative leadership and submitted as evidence in the ethics complaint against Harris. In one of the messages, sent a few days prior to the Feb. 23 meeting, Harris tells Breger that she must create a title for her presentation to the committee so Harris can put it on the agenda for the meeting. “We are trying to think of something that won’t raise a red flag,” Breger responded. “Can we be completely vague and say something like ‘Presentation by Harris/Thaler law Corporation.’” Harris said that Breger was somewhat of a last-minute addition to the agenda, after several other people who had planned to speak dropped out. Harris said she was under the impression that Breger would testify about a witness who reportedly saw a cache of ballots being kept outside of a Mesa residence, as well as about evidence of backdoor portals into the county computer systems in Maricopa, Yavapai, Yuma and Pima counties. Harris told the committee she didn’t meet Breger until the weekend prior to the committee meeting. Breger mentioned the alleged backdoor computer portal during her testimony, saying it was used in the housing deed scam, as well as to change election results. But she spent the majority of her time speaking about the housing scam. In the texts, Harris said that all electronic presentations before the elections committees had to be submitted to Toma beforehand, and for that reason, she suggested supplying paper handouts instead. Harris explained to the Ethics Committee that she suggested paper handouts because of time constraints, not because she wanted to keep the content of the presentation from Toma. Republican Sen. Ken Bennett eventually put an end to Breger’s testimony on Feb. 23, telling her she could not impugn members of the legislature. Later, Harris texted Thaler and Breger saying, “I left there (the committee meeting) today with the thought that I would never go back.” Harris told the Ethics Committee she was scared following the hearing and thought, “I’m about to be beheaded,” referring to what she feared would happen to her for inviting testimony alleging a housing fraud scheme involving the Sinaloa drug cartel. “I didn’t want to come back because I knew that I’d be blamed for everything,” Harris explained. In her formal response to the ethics complaint, Harris wrote that not only can the legislature not stop members of the public from expressing their grievances with the government, but the constitution required her to let Breger testify. “If the people see issues that need strengthening with laws to block the danger of mal-administered elections and wish to freely inform the people and instruct the legislature, the only body empowered to investigate and write appropriate laws, they are free to approach their servants in the legislative body,” Harris wrote. Despite Harris’ assertions to the contrary, the chairs of both the House and Senate election committees have significant power over who testifies during committee meetings, for how long they can speak and what they are allowed to say. During a House Municipal Oversight and Elections Committee meeting on March 8, Republican committee chair Jacqueline Parker told liberal lobbyist Ben Scheel that he could not utter the phrase “conspiracy theory” while speaking before the committee. During the same meeting, Parker told him he wasn’t welcome to speak before the committee until he could learn to be more respectful. Harris, who is a member of the committee, did not speak up in Scheel’s defense during that meeting, or a subsequent one during which Scheel was asked to leave after attempting to speak. “You were brave,” Harris texted Breger after the Feb. 23 meeting. “I knew they would shut it down. Took them longer than I thought.”
Arizona is still a circus... Citing ‘plenary powers,’ GOP leader claims a non-binding resolution bans Arizona election machines Gov. Hobbs vetoed actual legislation that would have done what Sen. Sonny Borrelli claims the resolution does https://www.azmirror.com/2023/05/22...ng-resolution-bans-arizona-election-machines/
LOL.... going broke from pushing election fraud claims. And Arizona is not the only state where this is happening to the GOP. Arizona GOP nearly broke after trying to overturn Trump's defeat: report https://www.rawstory.com/az-gop-broke-trump-defeat/
I hope the Cyber Ninjas enjoy their upcoming indictment. 'Cyber Ninjas' ensnared in Arizona fake electors investigation https://www.rawstory.com/arizona-fake-electors-probe/