Democratic former Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes, who is running for Arizona Secretary of State, is calling for the Arizona Legislature to impeach Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich. The former county elections chief said it is due to Brnovich’s “grotesque political self-service, abuse of office, and other bad acts.”
Fontes declared, “It is well past time for Arizona’s legislative leadership to investigate, for possible impeachment proceedings, the increasing instability of our state’s top prosecutor.”
State Rep. Mark Finchem (R-Mesa), who is also running for Arizona Secretary of State championing election integrity, told The Arizona Sun Times, “The one who should be impeached is Katie Hobbs for her ambivalence over repeated violations of state statutes and the elections procedure manual. She and Fontes oversaw the stolen 2020 election.”
In his memo, Fontes pointed to a recent order by the Arizona Supreme Court establishing a task force to set up an analysis of how Arizona rules of ethics for attorneys apply to public lawyers. He said the move “appears to have been sparked by the malfeasance and bad faith of the sitting attorney general, GOP candidate Mark Brnovich.”
However, Brnovich specifically asked the court to look into the issue due to 12 bar complaints that Democratic Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs filed against him and his staff attorneys that were dismissed. He asked the court to consider changing the ethics rules, and the Supreme Court appointed Brnovich’s own former chief deputy Mike Bailey to serve on the task force. It is headed by Arizona Supreme Court Justice Bill Montgomery, a Republican and former elected prosecutor.
Court spokesperson Alberto Rodriguez told The Arizona Republic that the timing was coincidental and not a “direct result” of the complaints against Brnovich. Chief Justice Robert M. Brutinel said in a statement, “This has been an issue for a number of years and it’s time we take a serious look at addressing potential conflicts for public attorneys.”
Fontes’ attack was directed at Brnovich for filing a brief in the Arizona Republican Party’s lawsuit against Hobbs, which asks the court to compel Hobbs to include signature verification procedures in the election procedures manual and remove the language she added authorizing the setup of unmonitored ballot drop boxes. Hobbs refused in December to make the changes to the state election procedures manual that Brnovich requested, due to his concern about risking criminal penalties.
Prior to the 2020 presidential election, Brnovich went to court to get a restraining order stopping Fontes from mailing out unrequested ballots to voters in Maricopa County. “The Maricopa County Recorder cannot unilaterally rewrite state election laws,” Brnovich said.
We are on our way to court now to file a motion for TRO and a Preliminary Injunction against Adrian Fontes and Runbeck Election Services to stop them from violating Arizona law. https://t.co/6riTYaEOWh
— Mark Brnovich (@GeneralBrnovich) March 13, 2020
Brnovich interviewed Fontes last fall regarding election fraud in the 2020 election, and Fontes lashed out at him afterwards. Fontes issued a statement that said in part, “What became clear to me after engaging with the office of Attorney General Brnovich is that this is merely a political stunt intended to benefit Brnovich’s 2022 Senate race by inflaming the delusions of conspiracy theorists.”
The Arizona State Bar dismissed the bar complaints against him from Hobbs in a diversion agreement, as well as another complaint filed by the Arizona Board of Regents, with no sanction or findings of professional misconduct. Brnovich issued a statement after being exonerated, which said in part, “These unprecedented complaints, filed by the SOS and ABOR, sought to use the State Bar to try to silence the Attorney General and to advance their own political agendas.”
The Arizona Republic’s left-wing columnist Elva Diaz followed up shortly after Fontes’ memo with an article of her own also calling for impeachment. She admitted the Republican-dominated Arizona Legislature is highly unlikely to impeach Brnovich.
In order to impeach him, just like on the federal level, the Arizona House would need to conduct an investigation and charge him with “high crimes, misdemeanors or malfeasance in office.” Next, the Arizona Senate would conduct a trial to convict or acquit.
Fontes’ bio claims credit for working with “community organizations” to “increase registered voters by five hundred thousand people” prior to the 2020 election. He said his “administration set up an elections infrastructure that led to record voter turnout in 2020.”
The Capital Research Center (CRC), which investigates shadowy dark money groups, found that the left-leaning Center for Technology and Civic Life funneled money from Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his wife to election officials in key swing states prior to that election, including Arizona. CTC gave Maricopa County election officials close to $3 million, and other large amounts to eight other Arizona counties. CRC notes that “Biden … outperformed every presidential nominee in Arizona history, Republican or Democrat.”
Kristen Eastlick, senior vice president of CRC, explained during a seminar on election integrity in January put on by the Arizona Free Enterprise Club that nonprofits are prohibited from influencing elections, and since these organizations are predominantly assisting Democrats, it is fraud.
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at the Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Adrian Fontes” by Gage Skidmore CC BY-SA 2.0.
