About effin’ time! 12 News reports, Former Attorney General Brnovich faces State Bar charges after documents show he concealed election report:
Former Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich faces potential threats to his law license after the release of documents showing the two-term Republican concealed his own investigators’ findings that debunked fellow Republicans’ claims of election fraud.
Eight Bar charges have been filed against Brnovich in the last two days, according to the State Bar of Arizona.
“The State Bar has received charges against Mark Brnovich related to the election audit issue. The charges are in the prescreening process. There is no further public information available,” Bar spokesman Joe Hengemuehler said in a prepared statement.
A Bar charge is the first step in investigating potential violations of Arizona’s Rules of Professional Conduct for attorneys.
A Bar charge could lead to a formal complaint against the state’s former top prosecutor and possible discipline by the State Bar.
Whatever the outcome, the process could take many months.
Brnovich has said in statements to other media outlets that he was proud of his office’s work on election integrity.
In a separate matter a year ago, Brnovich avoided Bar discipline by resolving ethics complaints brought by the Arizona Board of Regents and the Secretary of State’s Office.
Brnovich agreed to complete a diversion program, which requires corrective action.
Brnovich was termed out of office in early January.
Last August, he finished third in the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate.
To my knowledge – I have not heard or seen anything reported to the contrary – the State Bar of Arizona has not disciplined any of the RNC/Trump attorneys who brought the eight or nine frivolous legal challenges to the 2020 election who had bar complaints filed against them.
The last I saw reported, in March 2021, is that some of the bar complaints had already been dismissed. IOKIYAR. Complaints against 9 attorneys involved in election lawsuits dismissed by Arizona Bar; 12 still pending
The complaints named 21 lawyers and the state Supreme Court appointed Lisa Daniel Flores, a retired superior court judge and a former state elections director, to review them.
The bar confirmed on Monday it had dismissed the charges against four attorneys — Thomas Basile, Brett Johnson, Kory Langhofer and Eric Spencer — who were involved at different points in representing the Trump campaign and state and national Republican parties in one lawsuit against election officials.
They claimed Maricopa County poll workers had systematically overridden ballots with possible “overvotes” instead of allowing voters to make that choice themselves. Overvotes happen when voters mark more options than allowed in a particular race.
But after a six-hour hearing, it became clear that only a small number of ballots possibly were affected. Langhofer filed a motion acknowledging the outcome of the lawsuit would have no impact on Arizona’s presidential results, and the judge dismissed the claims as moot.
Flores said the case had good faith, factual basis and that the move to dismiss the case based on the ongoing statewide vote count made clear that the attorneys did not violate rules of professional conduct.
Langhofer also was accused of violating rules of professional conduct when he did not disclose that his expert witness was also his business partner.
Flores said that was Langhofer’s choice as a matter of trial strategy and she did not perceive it as misconduct. The bar also dismissed a complaint against Chris Ford, who had made filings in the case.
Other case dropped by attorneys
The bar has also closed complaints involving Erick Kaardal, David Spilsbury, William F. Mohrman and Gregory Erickson, who filed a lawsuit to vacate the presidential election but later moved to dismiss their own case.
Robert J. McWhirter, a member of the bar’s board of governors and one of the attorneys who filed the complaint, called that case “one of the more bizarre claims” in the flurry of allegations thrown around by the Trump campaign and its supporters after the election. The lawsuit claimed among other things that unidentified grant money was distributed to direct the actions of election officials by some “shadow government” orchestrated by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
“Confidence in the legal system is seriously eroded when attorneys treat lawsuits as a platform for broadcasting ‘gossip and innuendo,’ utterly devoid of factual proof, as a political stunt,” the complaint said.
Flores wrote that the case raised a number of concerns, some of which the lawyers could have addressed with even cursory research.
But she noted the lawyers chose to dismiss the lawsuit themselves just a few days after filing it.
“Had you proceeded with the litigation and further burdened the court, I may have decided to recommend formal discipline,” she wrote to Spilsbury.
Complaints against the 12 other lawyers named in early complaints are still pending. The complaints had also named some prominent attorneys in the Trump campaign’s efforts to reverse the election results, including Sidney Powell and L. Lin Wood.
Other attorneys named in the complaints that are still pending include Sue Becker, Julia Zuszua Haller, Brandon Johnson, Howard Kleinhenbdler, Alexander Kolodin [now in the legislature], Lee Miller, Emily P. Newman, Christopher Viskovic, Dennis I. Wilenchik and John “Jack” D. Wilenchik.
Some of these attorney have continued to represent Republicans bringing election denier lawsuits since this reporting.
I have little to no confidence in the State Bar of Arizona to discipline these attorneys or former AG Mark Brnovich. The State Bar has rarely disciplined high profile attorneys who are politically well connected.
NB: If you know of any later reporting on any of these attorney discipline cases, please post a link in the comments.
UPDATE: Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs “is seeking a review of what her office alleges was ‘likely unethical conduct’ by the state’s former attorney general, Mark Brnovich (R),” the Washington Post reports.
“A letter sent Friday from the governor’s office to the State Bar of Arizona follows the disclosure on Wednesday of records showing that Brnovich, a Republican, withheld findings by his own investigators refuting claims of fraud in the 2020 election and mischaracterized his office’s probe of voting in the state’s largest county.”
FIRST REPORTED BY @washingtonpost: Arizona governor seeks ethics review of former attorney general: https://t.co/8GeAKLje2T @isaacstanbecker @yvonnewingett pic.twitter.com/MijuBz1Kqr
— YvonneWingettSanchez 🏜 (@yvonnewingett) February 25, 2023
Arizona's @GovernorHobbs asks State Bar of Arizona to investigate former AG Mark Brnovich, per @isaacstanbecker.
▶️NOTED Hobbs lawyer says Brnovich was negotiating w Bar over separate alleged ethics violations while "likely unethical conduct" in elections investigation occurred. https://t.co/GUc6n9LMkb— Brahm Resnik (@brahmresnik) February 25, 2023
“Brnovich, in text message, says Hobbs is trying to ‘cancel’ him.” (The GQP whiner term du jour). You’re goddamn right your law license should be “canceled,” you unethical political hack!
Discover more from Blog for Arizona
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.