Tim Steller: Attorney General Mark Brnovich Is Abusing The Powers Of His Office And Should Resign

The Arizona Daily Star put this important opinion behind a pay wall, but it really ought to be republished in every newspaper in Arizona and widely distributed. So here it is, Tim Steller’s column: It’s time for Arizona AG Mark Brnovich to go:

Conservative performance artist Mark Brnovich should stop acting as Attorney General of Arizona.

For more than a year, Brnovich has been using abusing the power of the position he holds to establish himself as a super-Trump Republican.

Since June, when he announced hat he’s running for the GQP nomination for U.S. Senate, his behavior has only gotten worse, descending into self-parody.

But it’s not funny, since he is supposed to represent all Arizonans, not just a subset of Republicans whose political support he cherishes. Worse, he is under pressure from those same people to charge someone with election fraud relate to the 2020 election.

And no, they do not mean the co-conspirators in Trump’s seditious conspiracy, including all four of Arizona’s Republican members of Congress and several Republican state legislators, or the two groups of fake Republican electors who forged documents and fraudulently asserted they were the legitimate presidential electors (criminal impersonation) in a failed attempt to obstruct Congress from certifying the Electoral College results of the 2020 election (and to commit a fraud upon the United States). Brnovich has had over a year to take action against these criminals, but he is engaging in a politically motivated coverup to protect his fellow Republicans.

This is a decision that must be made cleanly, without Brnovich’s usual dramatic posturing.

But he’s shown no inclination to stop the act. The latest examples occurred [last] Monday, as Brnovich staked himself out as a pro-border-war candidate and inserted himself into the latest populist cause – the Canadian trucker convoy.

Evidence Lacking

In response to a request from extremist legislator Rep. Jake Hoffman, Brnovich issued a legal opinion Monday that Arizona is suffering an “invasion”at the Mexican border by cattle and gang members. As a result, under the Constitution [according to him], it may “engage in war” to repel the invasion.

Governors from Janet Napolitano to Doug Ducey have been using the National Guard at the border, but Brnovich’s opinion could potentially justify more direct engagement by soldiers, rather than keeping them in support roles. Brnovich’s opinion is worth a little analysis, since it is so clearly a political ploy as much as more than a legal opinion. He avoids declaring the migrants at the border “invaders” because that concept has already been thrown out in federal court. Instead he asserts “The on-the-ground violence and lawlessness caused by cartels and gangs is extensive, well-documented, and  persistent.”

While he refers to violence at the border as “escalating,” he gives no evidence that it actualy is increasing. In fact, the opinion cites three separate acts of violence that occurred in Mexico as  evidence of escalation in Arizona.

After citing one, a highway robbery deep in Sonora, he acknowledges, “although this did not occur in Arizona, it shows the threats if violence the cartels pose. ” [A general proposition which would be equally true for the Northern Triangle in Central America, one of the reasons driving so many migrants to seek asylum in the U.S. from gang violence.]

Sheriffs Divided 

This is the sort of rhetorical device that has long dogged Arizona’s border lands. Occurrences in Mexico are used to paint a picture of viiolence on both sides of the border, although in reality, the two sides are very different when it comes to the rule of law.

I surveyed the four Arizona border sheriffs to find if they agreed with the Attorney General’s description of the situation at the border as an “invasion.” Only one did, Sheriff Mark Dannels of Cochise County. In fact, he used Brnovich’s description as an explanation for why the county should accept a series of border-security grants at Tuesday’s meeting of the County Board of Supervisors.

In an email, Yuma County Sheriff Leon Wilmot did not embrace or reject the “invasion” description. He simply said it appeared Brnovich was laying the groundwork for state and local law enforcement  to become involved in stopping “mass migration” at the border.

These are the two Republican border sheriffs. The two Democratic border sheriffs rejected Brnovich’s “invasion” description as applying to their counties, Pima and Santa Cruz.

“Nothing would indicate that it’s an invasion or that we should take a war stance or war posture,” said Sheriff David Hathaway of Santa Cruz County, home to the state’s largest land port of entry at Nogales.

Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos said he doesn’t see signifiant gang and cartel activity along his county’s stretch of border and “does not let political rhetoric dictate what’s going on along that border.”

But of  course, accurately describing reality is not the point when it comes to Brnovich. The point, for a long time, has been to use his office to cultivate support in the five-way GQP primary for U.S. Senate.

Hence a lesser-known stand Brnovich took on Monday [last week]: His office sent a letter to GoFundMe, the company that allows people to run online fundraising campaigns. Brnovich’s concern, GoFundMe shut down a fundraiser for the Canadian “Freedom Convoy” that has been a cause célèbre on the populist right, starting as an anti-vaccine-madate protest. [Now a symbol for the international white nationalist (fascist) movement.]

His office was a little late in putting the letter out to have any practical effect. GoFundMe already had announced it would refund all $9 million in donations left in the fundraiser’s account. But that’s not the objective of Brnovich these days – the goal is to perform for GQP primary voters.

Under Pressure to Prosecute

Brnovich makes his legal decisions with those voters, that small subset of Arizonans, in mind. Take, for example, his position on investigating the [two] slates of alternative electors supporting Donald Trump who presented themselves as the state’s legitimate electors after the 2020 elections.

Brnovich who has spent Biden’s entire term in office confronting the federal government, suddenly became submissive when asked to investigate those electors for potential violations of state law, including forgery and criminal impersonation.

He said on KTAR’s The Mike Broomfield Show: “As to specific procedures regarding the aiuthenticity of electors, the U.S. Department of Justice is exercising its original jurisdiction in that case. So anybody who has questions or concerns aboit that should contact the Department of Justice.”

Yes, you really should ask the Department of Justice to investigate AG Nunchuck’s participation in Donald Trump’s coup plot. Rachel Leingang and Hank Stephenson report at the Tucson Weekly:

Then there’s yesterday’s scoop from the Yellow Sheet Report (3/9/2022) [an overpriced Tip Sheet, now posted at The Arizona Capitol Times (also behind a pay wall)], which dug up public records from attorney general/U.S. Senate candidate Mark Brnovich showing he was, in fact, at the White House on December 10 and 11, 2020, with a crew of Republican attorneys general who had backed a Texas lawsuit seeking to decertify the 2020 election. 

Arizona somehow was not among the 17 Red states that joined the lawsuit filed by Texas to decertify the 2020 election, which the Supreme Court rejected on December 11, 2020. Supreme Court rejects Texas’ effort to overturn election in fatal blow to Trump legal blitz to stop Biden. But apparently AG Nunchucks did participate in Trump’s coup plotting after this bogus legal challenge was rejected.

(The Republic had previously noted that former Trump Chief of Staff [and Coup Plotter] Mark Meadows attempted to contact Brnovich after the election through a member of Congress, but Brnovich’s office dodged questions about whether they actually spoke.)

Which raises all sorts of questions, like what exactly was Brnovich doing at the White House? What did he speak to the president about? Did the fake electors come up? [The Electoral College met on December 14.] Did Brnovich know that was coming? Is that why he’s not investigating fake electors while he’s chasing the Cyber Ninjas conspiracies down the drain? And, of course, how’s that audit investigation coming?

But as usual, Brnovich’s office isn’t talking. 

If it doesn’t benefit him politically, Brnovich won’t do it. 

That’s why it is so dangeros that he continues to hold the powers of the Attorney General’s Office.

In the weeks following the 2020 election, Brnovich dismissed the idea that fraud altered the election results in Arizona, and he certified th election. [Putting him at odds with Donald Trump and his cult members.]

Now the results of last year’s review of the election – the so-called Maricopa County “audit” [aka the Arizona Senate GQP sham “fraudit”] – have been handed to Brnovich’s office. He is under intense pressure to from former President Trump, from GQP primary voters and from his opponents to prosecute someone, anyone for purported election fraud [which did not occur] in the operation of the 2020 general election.

If we had a real Attorney General dedicated to the rule of law, he/she would prosecute the 16 Arizona GQP senators who authorized this partisan sham “fraudit,” and the QAnon conspiracy theorists Sen. Karen Fann hired as contractors to perpetrate this fraud on Arizonans and the American people, on behalf of Donald Trump’s election subversion and to promote his Big Lie. As we have learned from recent revelations from the January 6 Committee, they are co-conspirators in Trump’s grand conspiracy to undermine elections and American democracy, and to steal the next election.

“Mark Brnovich says President Trump is wrong on voter fraud,” a narrator intones in an ad by Saving Aroona PAC, released in September. “Brnovich failed to convene a grand jury, certified Biden as President. Now jhe’s nowhere to be found, making excuses instead of standing with our president” [ex-president Trump.]

That PAC supports Blake Masters, one of the five GQP candidates for the U.S. Senate nomination. The conservative disinformation outlet Gateway Pundit has also been going after Brnovich.

It’s owner, Jim Hoft, wrote in January, “Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich was given a platter of fraudulent and criminal activities related to the results of the 2020 Elections in Arizona. The fact that he has done nothing with this to date is reprehensible.”

Reminder: The Arizona Senate’s GQP sham “fraudit” conspiracy theories have been thoroughly discredited and rebutted by election experts. See, for example, Fact check: Arizona audit affirmed Biden’s win, didn’t prove voter fraud, contrary to Trump claim, and Partisan Arizona Election ‘Audit’ Was Flawed from the Start, and Arizona Vote Review ‘Made Up the Numbers,’ Election Experts Say, and Arizona ‘audit’: A multitude of unsubstantiated claims and no proof of fraud.

Nevertheless, our partisan hack Attorney General –

[Mark] Brnovich has said his office investigating allegations of criminal wrongdoing in the conduct of the election [which he certified.] If he doesn’t bring an indictment, some Republican voters and interests will punish him. If he does, any charges will appear to be political performance. [And malicious prosecution based upon “Trumped up” fraudulent allegations, another abuse of the power of his office.]

It’s a no-win situation that neither he, nor we as Arizonans, should be in.

The solution is for Brnovich to resign.

Every newspaper in Arizona should be editorializing along the same lines as this opinion. The corrupt Mark Brnovich is abusing the powers of his office. He has to go. And the State Bar of Arizona needs to investigate.