House Ethics Committee Slams Liz Harris, But Makes No Recommendation on Discipline

Update to Arizona Legislature Holds Election Denier Convention After Release Of AG Report Refuting Their Conspiracy Theories.

Election denier conspiracy theorist Liz Harris, who should never have been elected to the state legislature, may find herself kicked out of the state legislature for her stunt earlier this year. Actually, for inviting a witness to falsely accuse her Republican colleagues of crimes (defamation). Can’t we all just agree that this is a vile human being who has no place in elected government?

Howard Fischer reports, Ethics panel says Arizona lawmaker invited false testimony, lied:

Rep. Liz Harris violated House rules by inviting a witness to present false charges about lawmakers and others at a committee hearing and then lying about knowing what was going to be said, the House Ethics Committee says.

In a report released Tuesday, the committee found that the Chandler Republican lawmaker knew ahead of time that Jacqueline Breger, a Scottsdale insurance agent, was going to allege that numerous people, including House Speaker Ben Toma, other lawmakers, and judges were all part of schemes involving money laundering, drug trafficking, public corruption, bribery of public officials and election fraud. Breger also asserted during the hearing that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints “controls’’ government agencies and has been “integral to the laundering activities.’’

Harris, who invited Breger, also did nothing during the hearing to stop the presentation, the Ethics Committee said. Toma has said Breger presented “unsubstantiated and defamatory allegations.”

Ethics panel unanimously concludes @LizHarrisMBA violated House rules by allowing – if not engineering – testimony that libeled public officials, judges and more. https://t.co/yL7f0MjFS5 pic.twitter.com/3LZg6QbCU3

— Capitol Media Services 📢 Telling it like it is (@azcapmedia) April 11, 2023

Harris violated House rules against disorderly behavior and damaged “the institutional integrity of the House,” the five-member bipartisan Ethics Committee unanimously concluded.

Well, I’m not so sure about that. This is any day that ends in “y” in the Arizona legislature. There is so much crazy, how does one separate out this incident from any other day as damaging “the institutional integrity of the House”? They have all contributed to that.

But the panel made no recommendation on discipline. Instead, its report says all 60 House members should read the full report, look at the exhibits and draw their own conclusions.

Without a doubt, the next bit of intrigue is whether House Speaker Ben Toma, who was personally slimed, will push to expel Liz Harris.

The rumor mill is flying about the possibility, but political reality could throw cold water on any effort to do so. https://t.co/0Mr5HLfBNg

— Jim Small (@JimSmall) April 11, 2023

Punishment could be as little as a censure or as much as expulsion. The latter action would require a two-thirds vote of the full chamber.

Harris expressed little concern. “God knows the truth,’’ she told Capitol Media Services Tuesday.

‘Make sure this doesn’t happen again’

Even before the Ethics Committee probe, House Democrats had asked for a motion of censure, which was rejected by the Republican majority.

“The report now clearly demonstrates that Rep. Harris has damaged the integrity of the institution that we all hold dear,’’ said House Minority Leader Andres Cano of Tucson. “House Republicans need to tell us what their plan is to make sure this doesn’t happen again.’’

Oh, it will happen again. And again. And again.

There was no immediate response from Toma or House GOP leadership.

The investigation is fallout from a five-hour meeting in February of representatives and senators, requested by and organized by Harris, designed to hear presentations related to election integrity by pre-selected individuals. Breger was the last to testify.

During her testimony, the ethics panel found, Breger “unequivocally and repeatedly accused many government officials of criminal conduct.’’ That list included Toma, other legislators, local officeholders, Maricopa County Superior Court judges, prosecutors and attorneys. Breger specifically said that “in Arizona, public officials accepting bribes include members of the Legislature.’’

Text messages cited by ethics panel

At an Ethics Committee hearing last month, Harris insisted she didn’t know what Breger was going to say.

The report said the evidence shows otherwise. Backing that up is a series of text messages.

For example, when Harris asked Breger ahead of time for a title for her presentation, Breger responded, “We are trying to think of something that won’t raise a red flag.’’

There also was testimony that Harris spent more than two hours with Breger four days before the presentation. And in the next four days, the report says, Harris had at least one phone call with Breger, two online virtual meetings and an ongoing group text with Breger and her boyfriend, attorney John Thaler, who first aired some of the allegations in court proceedings related to his divorce and child custody case.

Ethics Committee members also said Harris took steps to avoid providing the materials ahead of the February hearing as required by internal House deadlines, and that she specifically wanted to keep the information, including the criminal allegations, away from House leadership.

“The totality of the evidence shows that Rep. Harris used her elected position to provide Breger with a legislative platform as a substitute for a criminal court,’’ the Ethics Committee concluded. “As Rep. Harris stated in a text message reply to Breger about the hearing, ‘It was all how it was intended to be.’ ‘’

‘Erodes public trust’

During the Ethics Committee hearing, Harris presented a defense that included repeated references to the state Constitution and her belief that lawmakers are obliged to allow citizens to come and present information to the Legislature.

“The people have the right to speak freely, petition the government and hold their government officials accountable,’’ Harris said in her lengthy rebuttal to the allegations. “We must ensure that these rights are protected and that the people are empowered to exercise them.’’

In its report, the Ethics Committee said it was not commenting on the constitutional rights of any individual to speak freely. But the report said House rules have long required not just the chamber’s own members but the public and press to “maintain proper decorum” during House proceedings.

“What the House rules cannot tolerate is a member engaging in the conduct described (in the report), which erodes public trust in the legislative process,’’ the report says.

The Arizona Mirror adds, Ethics Committee says Liz Harris damaged the integrity of the House, should be punished (h/t above photo) (excerpt):

Breger provided no proof of her wild and unfounded allegations, but that didn’t stop them from spreading like wildfire, fueled by fringe conservative media.

While Harris claimed during the Ethics Committee hearing that no criminal allegations were made during Breger’s Feb. 23 presentation, the panel  rejected that claim, finding that the legislative record contradicted Harris’s testimony.

The committee also rejected Harris’s testimony that she was not aware that Breger would make criminal allegations during her presentation, citing text messages between Harris and Breger before the meeting that indicated the opposite. The committee specifically highlighted a text exchange between Harris and Breger as they were working to come up with a name for Breger’s presentation.

“We are trying to think of something that won’t raise a red flag,” Breger wrote to Harris in a text message.

The committee also noted that Harris discovered Breger through a press release about an upcoming book release by John Thaler, Breger’s boyfriend. The book, which was a point of focus during the election committee presentation, highlights the supposed housing deed money laundering scheme, along with allegations of bribery.

The Ethics Committee also found that Harris’s warning to Breger prior to her presentation that she was not to impugn any member of the legislature or bring up any religious institution meant that she knew Breger intended to make allegations against members of the legislature and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

“In other words, that Representative Harris believed it necessary to make those requests of Breger suggests that she—at the very least—had reason to believe that they could be included in the presentation,” the Ethics Committee wrote in its report.

[W]hile Harris said that she believed Breger’s testimony would focus narrowly on a supposed “back door” into county computer systems that would allow someone to change election results, and a cache of ballots supposedly being kept outside of a Mesa residence, the Ethics Committee didn’t buy those claims.

“The committee finds that Representative Harris was not surprised or upset by Breger’s testimony and rejects Representative Harris’s testimony to the contrary,” the committee wrote in its report. “Representative Harris wrote that she knew that the Joint Elections Committee would shut down the presentation, and that doing so took the committee ‘longer than [she] thought’ it would. These messages show that not only was Representative Harris not taken by surprise by the presentation or ‘shocked’ by the inclusion of the table naming persons alleged to have accepted bribes, but that she expected the precise reception that it received.”

The Ethics Committee then found that, as the primary organizer of the Joint Elections Committee Meeting, and the acting vice chair of the committee during Breger’s presentation, Harris “violated the inherent obligation to protect the integrity of the House.”

The Ethics Committee pointed out that Harris didn’t try to stop Breger as she made unfounded allegations on Feb. 23, but that it was Republican Sen. Ken Bennett who finally stopped Breger and accused her of impugning members of the legislature.

“The absence of any action or reaction by Representative Harris further undermines her testimony that she was oblivious of what Breger would present,” the Ethics Committee wrote.

A censure will accomplish nothing, just look to the antics of Sen. Wendy Rogers who was censured. Senate votes to censure Wendy Rogers for threatening her colleagues. She has not modified her unhinged behavior in the slightest. In fact, she was emboldened to  fundraise off the censure among the election denier MAGA/QAnon crazy base. These wingnuts wear it as badge of honor. They are incapable of feeling shame or remorse.