Kari Lake’s attorney, Bryan Blehm, is encountering pushback defending himself against the State Bar of Arizona’s disciplinary proceedings.
The Arizona Bar is trying to disbar Blehm and two of Lake’s other attorneys for asserting in a brief that it was an undisputed fact that 35,000 ballots were inserted into the 2022 election at Runbeck Election Systems, Maricopa County’s third-party mail-in ballot processing company.
The Arizona Bar also brought charges against Blehm (pictured above) for a post on X criticizing the Arizona Supreme Court for setting up a disinformation task force that appeared to be directed in part to squelch election challenges from attorneys representing Republicans.
Blehm, who is representing himself, is in the discovery phase of the disciplinary proceedings, where parties provide disclosures to each other and serve interrogatories or subpoenas for information.
The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors (MCBOS) objected to his subpoena for documents regarding the chain of custody of ballots, stating that it was “not relevant to the pending charges and burdensome.” Represented by Ed Novak, a former bar president, the objection said Blehm was trying to find information after the fact to prove the validity of his statements.
Blehm filed a response to the objection, which began, “It appears that if the Board of Supervisors had its way, Respondent would simply be taken to the gallows without the ability to raise a defense.”
Lake’s attorney said his subpoena merely requested regular public records from the MCBOS.
“The documents Respondent seeks are public records that Maricopa County has, in their totality, shielded from public view,” Blehm said. “In fact, Maricopa County refused to provide all Chain of Custody documents during the Lake v. Hobbs matter, denying Plaintiff the ability to litigate the totality of Chain of Custody issues.”
After the issue was litigated in Lake’s election challenge, MCBOS released some chain of custody records, but they were “copies of records that were not legible” and “only those from its vendor Runbeck Election Services,” not records showing where the ballots were at when they were transferred to the county itself.
“To date, Maricopa County refuses to fulfill that simple public records request,” he said.
MCBOS also claimed it would be too voluminous and time-consuming to produce the chain of custody documents. In his response, Blehm said this was not true, since it took him only an hour to photograph all of the chain of custody documents from Maricopa County’s previous 2020 election. Additionally, “Respondent seeks to photograph the 1-page 2020 document because it was not included in the original production as Maricopa County officials sought to conceal it.”
Blehm served a subpoena on Runbeck, asking for the same thing Runbeck and Maricopa County refused to turn over in response to public records requests or, during litigation, video of the loading docks where ballots were loaded and unloaded for the 2022 election. We the People AZ Alliance sued Runbeck when it would not turn over the video. However, the judge ruled that Runbeck was not subject to public records requests as a private contractor. This diverged from a similar case involving the 2020 election, where a judge ruled that Cyber Ninjas, hired by the Arizona Senate to audit the 2020 election, was subject to public records requests due to being assigned to perform a function of government.
Blehm also served requests for production on the Arizona Bar, asking for communications regarding the topics of disinformation and misinformation, both internal and with outside parties such as election fraud-denying progressive activist attorney Marc Elias.
Blehm filed a motion requesting to transfer the disciplinary proceedings to “Tier 3” instead of “Tier 1” under the Arizona Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 26.2, which means treating it as a more complex case. He explained, “Under Tier 1, Respondent is limited to five (5) interrogatories in total. The State Bar of Arizona has charged me with 8 violations of the Rules of Professional Conduct. Under the current discovery limits, Respondent cannot even ask one (1) contention interrogatory for each alleged violation. This is unreasonable and this matter must be designated Tier 3 status.”
However, the Arizona Bar objected to the removal, claiming Blehm wasn’t allowed to reply and failed to request leave to reply. Similarly, the Arizona Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) attempted to duck Blehm’s subpoena, which asked for communications regarding disinformation and misinformation. The AOC claimed that even though it was the administrative office for the courts, Blehm must serve subpoenas on each court and individual mentioned separately.
The Arizona Bar issued its disclosure statement, which includes a list of witnesses prosecutors intend to call to testify at the trial. It named two attorneys from Elias’s firm, Abha Khanna and Lalitha D. Madduri, and an attorney from the States United Democracy Center, Sambo Dul. Both firms have been heavily involved in suing Arizona over election integrity and opposing Republican candidates who sued over election losses.
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter / X. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Bryan Blehm” by Bryan Blehm.
