No stolen election, yet conspiracists are now quiet

The truth is out and we now know that Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s yearlong investigation turned up no evidence of a stolen election in Arizona in 2020.

I can only imagine the relief felt by some of the state’s leading election deniers.

The politicians and self-proclaimed “experts,” people who have spent well over two years howling at the moon about a stolen election and the need to restore “election integrity.”

Legislative leaders who have spent millions in public funds hoping to uncover fraud — Republicans who are now working on dozens of bills to “reform” our elections and boost the voter confidence that they worked daily to undermine.

The secret is out. The Attorney General’s Office spent more than 10,000 hours investigating hundreds upon hundreds of complaints and the result?

“No evidence of election fraud, manipulation of the election process, or any instances of organized/coordinated fraud,” according to a September report from the AG’s chief investigator — the second of two reports kept hidden from the public until this week.

I can only imagine the relief felt by some of the state’s leading election deniers.

Well, I’m sure you can imagine the reaction of all those who have spent the last two-plus years slandering state and county elections workers and trying to invalidate Arizona’s vote.

Let’s hear from a few of them.

We’ll start with the queen of election denial.

Sen. Wendy Rogers spent two years calling for decertification of the 2020 election and “perp walks” of the (supposed) criminals who denied Donald Trump his due. She quickly became a rock star on the right, raising millions in campaign donations and scoring the chairmanship of this year’s Senate Elections Committee.

Here’s what Rogers had to say after Wednesday’s release of the AG’s findings:

Nothing.

Meanwhile on Thursday, Rogers was hosting an all-day joint meeting of the House and Senate election committees to explore various schemes to gain control after our supposedly stolen elections, including the nutty notion that the Legislature can overturn a presidential vote.

Or, as I like to call it, Conspiracy Fest 2023.

Let us turn now to former Rep. Mark

Finchem, one of the state’s earliest and loudest of the Stop the Steal shriekers.

Finchem leveraged his outrage to land the GOP nomination for the state’s No. 2 job in 2022 — in part by publicly claiming to have evidence of 30,000 fraudulent votes in Pima County.

Yet in a meeting with the AG’s investigators, “Finchem did not repeat those allegations, specifically stating he did not have any evidence of fraud and he did not wish to take up our time.”

Finchem actually tried to decertify the 2020 election, so I can only imagine how chastened he must now feel. Here’s his reaction to the AG report:

Finchem’s only response was to claim he did so hand over evidence.

“I am disgusted by the claim,” Finchem told The Arizona Republic. “When the AG has the evidence, but claims they don’t, it is impossible for me to disprove the claim. Original documentation is in the AG’s hands.”

Investigators acknowledged, in their report, that Finchem did, indeed, provide some information.

“He did provide 4 ballots that he said was evidence of a flawed process for mailing and counting ballots,” the report says. “The ballots had been mailed to prior residents of the address on file, the residents had moved, and the ballots cannot be forwarded by the postal service.”

Agents concluded the four ballots were unopened and were not counted.

Former Senate President Karen Fann in September 2021 asked Brnovich to investigate after receiving the results of her Cyber Ninjas audit, noting, among her concerns, statements that Maricopa County hid data from her auditors.

The AG’s investigation turned up no evidence of that, though they left the finding in their initial March 2022 report as “undetermined” pending a review of archived records.

Fann’s response on Wednesday was to retweet a post that jumped on that initial finding, ignoring the investigators’ later September 2022 report. The one that provided a scathing analysis of the Cyber Ninja audit, saying “in each instance, the information provided by CNI (Cyber Ninjas Inc.) was inaccurate and false.”

Kari Lake built an entire political campaign around her belief that the election was stolen. Her “war room” campaign’s Twitter account glommed onto several instances in which investigators, in that earlier March 2022 report, noted no findings pending a review of archived records.

Naturally, Lake thinks there’s a conspiracy afoot, courtesy of Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes, to hide the fraud.

Sen. Sonny Borrelli was quick to claim a cover-up in 2020 and in 2021 and in 2022. Just last week, he was pushing a bill to cancel everybody’s voter registration, noting the legion of dead voters who cast ballots in our state.

But when it came time to offer up proof?

“Senator Borrelli provided the name of a deceased voter whom he said he personally checked and the information was valid,” the AG investigators noted. “When we looked further into that particular voter, it was learned Mr. Borrelli was incorrect.”

Borrelli said his own investigation of 30 ballots turned up 17 dead voters. The AG’s Office is just trying to distract people from the Senate’s ongoing investigation into the election.

Senate President Warren Petersen was a driving force behind the scenes in pushing for the Cyber Ninjas audit.

He appointed Wendy Rogers as the Republicans’ point person on election bills this year and proceeded to contract with Gina Swoboda to assist her.

Swoboda, who is big in election denial circles and has ties to both the Trump and Lake campaigns, is being paid $15,000 a month to act as a senior policy adviser to Rogers’ Elections Committee, according to records unearthed by reporter Dillon Rosenblatt on his Fourth Estate 48 Substack.

Petersen’s response to the AG’s findings? Nothing.

How about a few of our fake electors, state Sens. Jake Hoffman and Anthony Kern and former state GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward — extremists who blatantly schemed up a plan to rob us of our vote?

Nope, nothing.

Finally, let’s cut to U.S. Reps. Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs and Debbie Lesko, who actually voted on Jan. 6, 2021, to reject Arizona’s presidential election results.

Alas, they, too, are silent.

Curiously, outrageously silent about the AG’s investigation that debunked the bunk they have been force-feeding us for far, far too long. Astonishing silent about the frightening fact that they staged an assault on democracy.

Oh, I know. It would be too much to ask for perp walks.

But how about a few apologies?