AG Mark Brnovich is embarrassing himself

Attorney General Mark Brnovich continues the charade that he’s still working as the chief law enforcement officer for the state of Arizona.

As opposed to, say, reducing a oncerespected office into a cheap campaign tool in his quest to snag a seat in the U.S. Senate.

It was bad enough when Brnovich in January sent out a fundraising letter featuring a picture of himself and Trump mugging for the camera, with this pitch: “DON’T MISS YOUR CHANCE TO BE ON TRUMP’S TEAM!” On that day, Brnovich declared for all the world to see what most of us already knew — that he had no intention of actually doing his job. (See: Brnovich’s noninvestigation of Arizona’s fake electors.)

On that day, any attorney general possessed of ethics and a keen sense of fair play would have resigned to pursue his Senate dream, noting that he cannot faithfully serve both Arizona's 7.2 million residents and Donald Trump.

Instead, we have Brnovich, who apparently never saw a conflict of interest he couldn't ignore, chasing an endorsement that will never come.

On Monday, candidate Brnovich sent out another plea for funds, this time touting Attorney General Brnovich's interim report on the Maricopa County election audit — a report in which he breathlessly noted that his Election Integrity Unit found “serious vulnerabilities” in Arizona’s election system and “uncovered instances of election fraud.”

"Our concerns about early ballots were on the mark," Brnovich wrote, in his plea for cash.

Funny, that's not what Brnovich was saying in November 2020 when he flatly shot down claims that Arizona's election had been stolen.

“It came down to: People split their ticket,” he told host FOX Business’ Neal Cavuto at the time. “People voted for Republicans down ballot, and they didn't vote for President Trump or Martha McSally. So, that's the reality."

That was an attorney general who noted that any conspiracy surely would have resulted in the re-election of then-Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes, who was defeated by Republican Stephen Richer.

“If indeed there was some great conspiracy, it apparently didn't work,” Brnovich told Cavuto. “The county election official, who's a Democrat, lost, and other Republicans won.”

Now, suddenly Brnovich is running for the Senate, and well, things look different.

“One thing is clear: there are problematic, system-wide issues relating to ballot handling and verification that need to be addressed,” Brnovich wrote on Monday to potential donors. “Our system, as it currently stands, is insufficient to guard against abuse and is

vulnerable to error, fraud, and oversight.”

Brnovich goes on to report that 100,000 to 200,000 early ballots left in drop boxes “were transported outside the chain of custody.”

However, nowhere does he acknowledge the Republican-run county’s explanation that those were mostly paperwork errors or that tamper evident seals were secured on every drop box or that the county says it can account for every ballot.

And nowhere does he point to a single phony vote as a result of those “problematic system-wide issues.”

He claims in his plea for cash that “election workers had an average of 4.6 seconds to verify over 200,000 early ballot signatures.” But nowhere does he explain to potential donors that his conclusion is apparently based upon watching one person on one day, out of dozens of elections staffers who spent weeks verifying signatures.

To be fair, the attorney general did find and is now prosecuting election fraud, as noted in his interim report (though strangely, left out of his fundraising plea).

Nine whole cases, in fact. Out of 3.4 million votes cast.

Sadly, for Brnovich, his obvious attempt to use his office to court Trump didn't even impress Trump. The expresident on Monday gave Arizona's attorney general what amounts to a rhetorical kick in the pants and announced that an endorsement in the Senate race will be coming soon.

"Rather than go after the people that committed these election crimes, it looks like he (Brnovich) is just going to 'kick the can down the road' and stay in that middle path of non-controversy," Trump said. "He wants to be politically correct. Because of the amount of time that it took him to do the report, which was endless, his poll numbers have been rapidly sinking. Now, people are upset with the fact that while he states the problem, he seems to be doing nothing about it — he doesn’t give the answers."

Brnovich, meanwhile, lamely trudges on, with a coalition of just about nobody as he scrambles to find traction in the Senate race.

“What our investigation revealed," Brnovich wrote, "should concern every Arizonan."

Indeed, every Arizonan should be concerned. The highest law enforcement official in the state, locked in a crowded Republican primary with better funded candidates and dropping in the polls, is clearly desperate to become Trump’s chosen one.

All that's left for us to wonder is, How desperate?