Election probe spurs Bar complaints
Complaints against former state Attorney General Mark Brnovich are stacking up at the State Bar of Arizona over his handling of a 2020 election fraud investigation.
A State Bar official confirmed Friday that eight complaints, called charges, have been filed against Brnovich.
“The State Bar has received charges against Mark Brnovich related to the election audit issue,” Joe Hengemuehler, chief communications officer, said in an email. “The charges (eight) are in the prescreening process. There is no further public information available.”
Newly released records show Brnovich suppressed reports showing his investigators “did not uncover any criminality or fraud” in the 2020 election — even as he claimed Maricopa County’s election system was “vulnerable to error, fraud and oversight.”
An investigative report and two internal memos from 2022 were made public on Wednesday by Attorney General Kris Mayes, who said Brnovich misled the public about a sprawling election probe that consumed his office for more than a year, involving dozens of agents and at least 10,000 hours of staff time.
Brnovich could not be immediately reached for comment Friday and has not responded to phone calls from The Arizona Republic about his handling of the investigation. He told ABC 15 his office did its “due diligence to run all complaints to ground.”
The State Bar, which licenses and regulates attorneys in Arizona, did not identify who filed the complaints or the allegations against Brnovich.
A Bar charge is the first step in a process that could lead to a range of discipline against an attorney from admonition to disbarment, but it is no guarantee the Bar will investigate. It first must screen reports of allegations to determine if enough information exists to dismiss a case or proceed.
Neither Mayes nor Gov. Katie Hobbs would say if Brnovich should face sanctions.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes has called for Brnovich’s disbarment.
“I am deeply disappointed by the wasteful and pointless actions by a top law enforcement official who diverted
thousands of hours of staff time to pursue unfounded allegations of election fraud,” Fontes said in a statement.
“I am astounded that the result of this costly investigation, which thoroughly debunked these claims, was kept from the taxpayers who paid the bill. Election workers throughout the state and the nation are facing threats coming from these unfounded allegations of fraud, and they deserve an apology.”
After Mayes released the documents on Wednesday, Brnovich was denounced on social media, with many people sharing how a Bar complaint could be filed.
The former attorney general’s supporters defended him, saying the investigation’s findings were compromised by Maricopa County officials’ lack of cooperation and that fraud had skewed election results.
Brnovich, who was running in a competitive GOP primary for the U.S. Senate, launched his probe in 2021 at the request of Arizona Senate Republicans who had commissioned a hand recount of every ballot cast in Maricopa County to determine if the election outcome had been rigged against then-President Donald Trump.
In an April 2022 interim report, Brnovich
said the initial investigation “revealed serious vulnerabilities that must be addressed and raises questions about the 2020 election in Arizona.” He said his agents found widespread flaws in the election system in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous.
Issuing an interim report is an unusual step almost unheard of in criminal investigations, in which prosecutors typically do not comment on ongoing cases.
The new documents show Brnovich’s investigators sought to edit the initial report and temper conclusions to reflect the actual findings, which debunked several popular conspiracy theories.
Those included claims that dead people voted; 17,126 voters mailed two ballots; 23,344 voters living outside Arizona illegally voted by mail; 86,391 ballots were cast by people who did not exist; and 35,000 votes were unlawfully inserted into Pima County’s election system.
Investigators pushed back on some of Brnovich’s critiques of Maricopa County’s policies and procedures for ballot handling, signature verification, ballot rejection rates and the cooperation of election officials.
Brnovich did not include the investigators’ comments in his report.
This isn’t the first time Brnovich has faced State Bar complaints.
In 2022, he settled two Bar complaints alleging ethical violations filed by the Arizona Board of Regents and the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office.
The State Bar allowed Brnovich to avoid formal discipline on his record by entering into a diversion agreement, the terms of which were not made public.
The complaints filed in 2020 alleged Brnovich violated rules for attorney conduct and his duties to represent the state when he filed lawsuits against the regents; and that he failed to adequately represent the secretary of state and mishandled election-related lawsuits.
Brnovich declared the settlements a “victory for the rule of law” despite facing corrective action.
Hobbs, who was then secretary of state, accused Brnovich and several of his top attorneys of sabotaging electionrelated cases and misrepresenting her office. She said the State Bar’s findings showed Brnovich acted unethically.