Attorney General Kris Mayes held a press conference on Wednesday to announce the indictment of Arizona’s alternate slate of electors for former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, along with other named and unnamed co-conspirators and unindicted co-conspirators including Trump.
Mayes made several incorrect assertions about the law.
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Peter Bernegger, president of Election Watch in Wisconsin, was arrested last week after filing complaints against officials and candidates he exposed for accepting donations allegedly facilitated by progressive activists in the names of people who were unaware of them. He was charged with a felony, simulating a legal process.
Bernegger posted on X after posting bail and being released, “This is politically motivated where they are trying to shut me up, to shut us all up. For those who don’t know, this is the second time they have come after me; the first time was dismissed in 15 minutes when the judge learned the truth of the matter.”
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State Senate President Warren Petersen (R-Mesa) and Speaker of the House Ben Toma (R-Peoria) filed a Motion for Leave to File Brief as Amicus Curiae in the prosecution of Cochise County Supervisor Tom Crosby on March 8.
Crosby, along with Cochise County Supervisor Peggy Judd, was indicted by a grand jury in November 2023 for briefly delaying canvassing of the 2022 election in order to investigate the laws that were broken. Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes charged them with the class 5 felonies of Interference With an Election Officer—even though they were in part administering elections themselves as officials—and conspiracy since they both voted together to delay the canvassing.
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Trump’s former attorney and constitutional legal scholar, John Eastman, who is undergoing lawfare as a result of his representation of Trump in the 2020 election challenges, is facing multiple legal proceedings but is in good spirits.
Eastman, widely considered one of the top legal scholars on the right, who founded the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, served as dean for Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law, and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, told The Arizona Sun Times during an interview that he remains “cheerful but defiant.”
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A panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled unanimously on Monday that the D.C. Bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel (ODC) unconstitutionally subpoenaed documents from former President Donald Trump’s former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark in violation of his Fifth Amendment rights.
In addition to facing ODC disciplinary charges for his role in assisting Trump in handling the 2020 presidential election irregularities, Clark was indicted along with Trump and others in Georgia and is an unnamed co-conspirator in another case. The court issued its decision immediately after a hearing on Friday.
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Cochise County Supervisors Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd are fighting back against Attorney General Kris Mayes’ prosecution of them for voting to delay certification of the 2022 election by three days. The pair filed motions last week requesting that the case be dismissed and challenging the grand jury’s finding of probable cause against them.
In Crosby’s Motion to Dismiss, which Judd joined later, Crosby’s attorney Dennis Wilenchik said, “The criminal statute involved is vague and ambiguous and overbroad, and unconstitutional as applied here to a member of a Board of Supervisors of a County voting in his official capacity. The case was brought purely for political purposes by the Attorney General and is an egregious abuse of her powers.”
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Mohave County Supervisor Ron Gould filed a lawsuit against Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes over her threat to prosecute him if he voted in favor of conducting a hand count of the 2024 election. He asked the court in the complaint, which was filed on January 19, to rule “[t]hat Plaintiff should not be subjected to threats and intimidation by the Attorney General for voting to have hand counting be the primary initial method of vote tabulation.”
Represented by Wilenchik & Bartness, Gould described the threat, “This case is about an elected official potentially losing his liberty and being jailed as a criminal, if Defendant Mayes is correct, for voting according to his conscience, and pursuant to the will of his constituents, based on election statutes that appear not to bar his intended support for vote counting based on hand counting and not the use of electronic voting machines.”
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The State Bar of Arizona’s disciplinary judge Margaret Downie, along with a hearing panel of two others, suspended the law license of longtime Maricopa County prosecutor April Sponsel on December 19 mainly for prosecuting multiple people at an Antifa riot that took place in downtown Phoenix on October 17, 2020 after the death of George Floyd. The 71-page Decision and Order Imposing Sanctions also faulted her decision to charge a thief accused of assaulting police officers. The Arizona bar has come under increasing criticism in recent years for targeting conservative attorneys.
The trial was held in October, with over 8,100 pieces of evidence, including documents and videos, and 30 witnesses testifying. In February 2021, then-Maricopa County Attorney Allister Adel made a decision to dismiss all the charges. ABC-15 credited their reporting with the reason for the dismissal. “On February 12, 2021, MCAO dismissed the gang charges against protesters following a week of intense scrutiny because of ABC15’s reporting,” the news site said. The station interviewed the rioters and portrayed them as peaceful protesters.
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The Maricopa County Republican Committee (MCRC) unanimously passed a resolution on December 5 calling on the Arizona House of Representatives to impeach Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes. The resolution cited Mayes’ record opposing election integrity, notably her prosecution of two Cochise County Supervisors over delaying the certification of the 2022 election for three days.
The MCRC executive board and all legislative district chairs voted for the resolution, which began, “WHEREAS, We, the Executive Guidance Committee of the Maricopa County Republican Committee, condemn Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes’ illegitimate political prosecution of the brave elected officials of Cochise County, Peggy Judd and Tom Crosby, for acting in accordance with their oath of office.” It accused Mayes of “abusing her prosecutorial powers as the Arizona Attorney General,” by engaging in “an act of political prosecution common in dictatorships or communist countries.”
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Jeffrey Clark, an attorney who served at high levels of the Department of Justice under former President Donald Trump, is undergoing both prosecution and bar disciplinary proceedings for his slight involvement with the 2020 election challenges. The District of Columbia Bar, its disciplinary panel, and the federal trial court judge refused to let Clark remove the disciplinary proceedings to federal court, despite the fact there is a federal law providing for removal when the actions in question involve a federal official, so Clark filed an appeal with the D.C. Court of Appeals on Thursday.
Clark is being disciplined and prosecuted for drafting a letter to Georgia election officials after the 2020 election advising them of options the Georgia Legislature could take to address the concerns about election illegalities. The letter was never sent or even circulated.
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Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes, who narrowly won her election by only 280 votes, the closest statewide race in Arizona’s history, has convinced a grand jury to indict two Cochise County Supervisors for briefly delaying certification of the 2022 election in order to investigate the laws that were broken. Cochise County Supervisors Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd, both Republicans, also unsuccessfully attempted to conduct a hand count of the election. Mayes sued them over the delay last November.
“The repeated attempts to undermine our democracy are unacceptable,” Mayes said in a press release. She said the indictment alleged that “on or between October 11, 2022, and December 1, 2022, Judd and Crosby conspired to delay the canvass of votes cast in Cochise County in the November 2022 General Election.” She said this also interfered with the Secretary of State’s statewide canvassing.
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The TV show 60 Minutes aired a story about the lawfare against Donald Trump’s former attorney and constitutional legal scholar John Eastman on Sunday, which repeated much of the mainstream media’s talking points about his legal advice to Trump regarding the illegal activity in the 2020 election. Host Scott Pelley interviewed both Eastman and former Vice President Mike Pence’s attorney Greg Jacob, who has made a considerable effort distancing himself from his advice in December 2020 stating that it was unclear whether the vice president had substantive authority regarding the acceptance of disputed electoral slates.
Pelley described Eastman as a “little known law professor” until he represented Trump in 2020, but Eastman is arguably the most preeminent law professor on the right, having clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, founded the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, and served as dean for Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law.
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Cochise County Supervisor Tom Crosby, who sought to eliminate the use of voting machine tabulators in the 2022 election, delay certification, and conduct a hand count of ballots, received a grand jury summons from Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes earlier this month. The summons does not indicate what he is being investigated for, but he has tangled with Democratic officials over his concerns about election fraud.
Crosby and fellow Cochise County Supervisor Peggy Judd voted 2-1 against the lone Democrat on the board in favor of a hand count of last year’s election in October 2022, after receiving a letter from Arizona Corporation Commissioner Jim O’Connor threatening legal action if voting machine tabulators were used. The two also voted to delay certification of last year’s election, prompting Mayes to sue the supervisors.
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Jeffrey Clark, an attorney who served at high levels of the Department of Justice under former President Donald Trump, is being stonewalled in his request to delay a disbarment trial while criminal proceedings in Georgia go forward. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis indicted Clark and Trump in a racketeering case over the 2020 election challenges. Willis charged him with dishonesty and attempting to interfere with the administration of justice by the District of Columbia Bar. The charges in both relate to a letter Clark (pictured above) drafted about 2020 election irregularities in Georgia addressed to Georgia officials that was never sent.
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The disbarment trial of Trump’s attorney and constitutional legal scholar John Eastman resumed this past week on Thursday and Friday, and continues next on Tuesday, September 5. On Friday, Eastman’s attorney Randy Miller cross-examined the State Bar of California’s expert witness Matthew Seligman, an election fraud denier and attorney who serves as a fellow at the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, and former Secretary of State Elections Director Bo Dul also testified.
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, posted on X regarding the proceedings, “Kangaroo court proceedings in California to disbar John Eastman, one of the nation’s leading constitutional lawyers, for daring to provide legal advice on the Biden election controversy.”
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Politically motivated prosecutors convinced a grand jury to indict Donald Trump on August 1 for challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election, blaming him for the raucous protest at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. To prove their case, prosecutors intend to show Trump believed there was election fraud in several states, including Arizona. Trump genuinely believed there was election fraud in the state leading up to the protest.
Trump’s campaign, along with the Republican National Committee and Arizona Republican Party, filed a lawsuit against then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs on November 7, 2020, alleging that poll workers told voters who marked extra fields on their ballots, known as “overvotes,” to submit their ballots to the voting machine tabulators anyway. The lawsuit alleged that the overvotes were not counted by the tabulators. The judge dismissed the case, citing no reason other than mootness.
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Joe Biden has about 17 months left as an elected politician — if he is lucky. That projection guides most of the inexplicable and shameless behavior of the Department of Justice and Biden himself. View Biden as in a race against the truth. Will he be physically and mentally able to complete his term and head to retirement before his decades-long crimes of corruption catch up to him?
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Politically motivated prosecutors have begun charging the slates of alternate electors from the 2020 presidential election with crimes, and are now investigating Arizona’s alternate electors. Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes campaigned on a platform promising to investigate the alternate 22 Republican electors. No one has been ever charged with a crime for participating in an alternate electoral slate until now, even though there have been alternate electoral slates presented throughout history.
Mayes said during an interview in February, “There has to be a deterrent to this happening again. We can’t have this occurring again in Arizona — or in the country.”
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The Arizona Republican Party (AZGOP) Executive Committee and the Maricopa County Republican Committee Executive Guidance Committee (MCRC) issued unanimous resolutions last week condemning the indictment of former President Donald Trump secured by Democratic New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Other prominent Republicans in the state including Kari Lake also spoke up denouncing the prosecution.
Both GOP resolutions contained similar language, strongly condemning the “political persecution” and “political witch hunt.” The AZGOP resolution emphasized that the Republican Party stands for “upholding justice and the rule of law,” and criticized the Democrats’ “blatant disregard for justice.” The statement concluded by condemning “the weaponization of the American justice system against political opponents of the current justice system.”
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John Adams may have summed up the American experiment best: “We are a government of laws, not men.” This was the origin of all talk of a “rule of law.”
Alas, we are currently a nation in manifest decline. Accordingly, “rule of law,” the cornerstone of our judicial system, must be radically reassessed. The concept, much like the justice system as a whole, has been contaminated, perhaps irrevocably, by bad-faith actors, for which the Constitution, understood in its proper, historical context, is totally foreign. Our historic Constitution ought to be understood as hopelessly forgotten by those now tasked to defend its sacred tenets. And so accounts for the present chaos.
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George Alan Kelly, a southern Arizona rancher, received over $350,000 in legal defense fund aid on GiveSendGo after being kicked off of GoFundMe for trying to raise money for his case.
Kelly is being charged with first-degree, premeditated murder for allegedly shooting an illegal immigrant on his property on January 30. GoFundMe took off multiple legal defense funds for Kelly because the company said these funds violated its terms of service about raising money “to cover the legal defense of anyone formally charged with an alleged violent crime.”
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Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody is issuing another warning to Floridians to be aware of fraudsters attempting to take advantage of those impacted by Hurricane Ian.
“Hurricane Ian devastated Floridians, destroying homes and leaving thousands without food, water or electricity,” Moody said. “Rebuilding will take months or longer – creating an inexhaustible demand for qualified contractors and debris removal services.
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Legislative District 10 Republicans and Michele Swinick of the Save My Freedom Movement put on an event Wednesday evening featuring the story of Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters, who says she believes she encountered programming discrepancies with the voting machines in her county in Colorado, and is now being prosecuted for election tampering.
The event included a screening of the documentary about her experience, “Selection Code,” and a Q & A session with both Peters and the documentary producers and directors, Matt and Joy Thayer. The title “Selection Code” refers to programming voting machines in order to choose certain candidates as winners.
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The highly anticipated first report from Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s investigation into the results of the Maricopa County independent ballot audit are in, and includes criminal prosecutions. Addressed to Senate President Karen Fann (R-Prescott), who launched the independent audit, the letter referenced the work of his office’s Election Integrity Unit. Brnovich stated, “The EIU’s review has uncovered instances of election fraud by individuals who have been or will be prosecuted for various election crimes.”
Leading gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who just called for the results of the 2020 presidential election in Arizona and Wisconsin to be reversed, told The Arizona Sun Times, “Today, Attorney General Brnovich confirmed what most of us have known since November 3rd, 2020: The election in Maricopa County was crooked and never should have been certified. This is not a Republican or Democrat issue. It’s an American issue. I look forward to seeing the prosecutions that the Attorney General has in store. It’s time for the perpetrators of this fraud to be held accountable for their actions.”
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With Maricopa County Attorney Allister Adel resigning just three weeks before signatures are due for candidates running for that position, several attorneys have decided to run and are now racing around trying to collect 4,300 valid signatures by April 4. Since voters can only sign one candidate’s petition in the race, the candidates are quickly trying to distinguish themselves from the rest of the pack.
Former Arizona legislator Thayer Verschoor, who is currently running for Maricopa County Supervisor, issued a list of questions to ask the candidates, which the Arizona Sun Times requested the candidates answer. Not one of the candidates bothered to respond with answers by the time this article was posted.
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The media went wild last week after Joe Biden’s Justice Department finally produced a criminal indictment to support the claim that January 6 was an “insurrection” planned by militiamen loyal to Donald Trump: Eleven members of the Oath Keepers, including its founder, Stewart Rhodes, face the rarely used charge of seditious conspiracy for their brief and nonviolent involvement at the Capitol protest that day.
Journalists luxuriated in the news, jeering those of us who had correctly noted that the Justice Department had failed to charge anyone with insurrection or sedition for more than a year.
But the press does not share the same zeal in covering another politically charged investigation: the imploding criminal case against five men accused of plotting to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020. The kidnapping narrative shares many similarities with their preferred telling of January 6, not the least of which is that alleged militias incited by Trump attempted to carry out a domestic terror attack.
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A federal appeals court in Washington declined Monday to order the dismissal of the Michael Flynn prosecution, permitting a judge to scrutinize the Justice Department’s request to dismiss its case against President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser.
The decision keeps the case at least temporarily alive and rebuffs efforts by both Flynn’s lawyers and the Justice Department to force the prosecution to be dropped without any further inquiry from the judge, who has for months declined to dismiss it. The ruling represents the latest development in a criminal case that has taken unusual twists and turns over the last year and prompted a separation of powers tussle involving a veteran federal judge and the Trump administration.
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