It’s post-election 2020 and Arizona Republicans are losing their alleged minds over Donald Trump’s defeat nationally and in their state. After all, except for Clinton in 1996, no Democratic candidate for President had won Arizona since 1952, and Trump took the state by five points in 2016. But on election night 2020, after Fox News of all outlets called the race for Biden, “Stop the Steal” was born at the Maricopa County election office, and the drumbeat continued, eventually resulting in the costly and inept “audit” of county ballots.
Soon many Arizona Republicans boarded the “Stolen Election” crazy train, which wound its way through most red states and reached its destination at the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. As the Committee’s extensive report makes clear, just about everyone in the Trump orbit, including the orange pustule himself, knew the election was not stolen, knew there weren’t dead people voting, knew undocumented immigrants didn’t tilt the election for Biden, knew there weren’t suitcases full of ballots dumped into the mix, knew there weren’t thousands of votes switched by Dominion’s machines—but that didn’t matter. Trump would be told by his attorneys, family, or advisors that a popular conspiracy theory was bunk, and he’d go out the very next day and repeat it, often putting election workers and elected officials in danger.
Not only did Trump and his team know the election was fair, the same was true for officials at the local level, such as Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich. In the state’s closest 2022 race, Democrat Kris Mayes was elected the new AG after defeating Abraham Hamadeh by only 280 votes. It’s good she won because otherwise we probably wouldn’t know this: Mayes just released the findings of Brnovich’s investigation into 2020 election fraud, which the Republican senatorial hopeful announced in order to stay on the good side of MAGA world. He said the public would know the results as soon as he did. We just found out. He lied.
Kris Mayes, who was elected to replace Brnovich in November, released three documents on Wednesday that showed that Brnovich’s Office had devoted 60 staffers and more than 10,000 hours to investigating claims of alleged fraud in the 2020 election and found the claims either had no evidence to support them or were outright false.
The AG’s office spent 10,000 hours investigating fraud and found bupkis. But Brnovich kept those findings to himself as Trump and Republicans continued their stolen election nonsense, while Brnovich positioned himself for a 2024 senate run, when he’d need Trump’s endorsement. Not only did Brnovich stay silent about bogus fraud claims, but after the Cyber Ninjas’ “audit” found nothing (other than Biden received even more votes), he issued a report that played into the conspiratorial Big Lie bullshit, suggesting that there were voter irregularities that may have cost Trump the state.
It also offers a different perspective from an April 2022 “interim report” released by Brnovich which claimed to have found “serious vulnerabilities” that are nowhere to be found in the documents released, and which his investigators told him were incorrect before the report was issued.
Like Trump, Brnovich was told the truth by his own investigators, but he ignored it and instead lied about “serious vulnerabilities,” which were precisely NONE. Here’s the investigators’ actual response to the deluge of conspiracies swirling around in the media and GOP world:
“While a significant majority of the complaints alleged irregularities with the election process, no evidence of election fraud, manipulation of the election process, or any instances of organized/coordinated fraud was provided by any of the complaining parties...”
Brnovich knew that but did not share it with the public, as he said he would. After all, it’s the 2022 midterms, when all of the state’s top Trump-endorsed GOP candidates were deniers. The AG’s news wouldn’t help. Arizona Democrats exceeded most expectations in ‘22, but it sure would’ve helped to have had the Republican AG’s report to throw at Kari Lake and other conspiracy nutters (her grift continues, natch).
The AG’s findings parallel the numerous lawsuits filed by Republican losers like Lake and Mark Finchem. They claim election fraud over and over, in lawsuit after lawsuit, but they never provide factual evidence, and the cases are always dismissed, often with penalties because the lawsuits are so frivolous. The AG office’s interview with Finchem was typical of the deniers they questioned:
Investigators were interested in speaking with Finchem about claims he made regarding Pima County and him finding allegedly 35,000 fraudulent voters. But when Finchem met with investigators, he did not mention that allegation. Instead, he said he did not have any evidence of fraud and did not wish to take up their time.
The AG investigators looked into claims by many Republican deniers, like Putin’s friend Sen. Wendy Rogers, they examined a boatload of QAnon suspicions, they checked the stupid Mule movie’s claims, they exposed conspiracies as fantasy talk, and they reviewed statements and findings from the Cyber Ninjas’ “audit.” Nothing, nada, zilch, fuck no.
But you wouldn’t have known that for a year if you lived in Arizona and listened to the Attorney General. Who wants to be your Senator. Not gonna happen. Brnovich is the Mike Pence of Arizona—nobody likes him.
