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When his office debunked election fraud claims, Attorney General Mark Brnovich concealed the reports
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Howard Fischer/Capitol Media Services
Mark Brnovich
Last year, as former Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich released a report casting doubt on the 2020 election, his own staff was busy debunking claims of voting irregularities and fraud.
But Brnovich never released the results of their labors.
Instead, the Republican — and at the time, candidate for U.S. Senate — adopted a flawed “interim report” recapping six months of investigations that he claimed raised concerns about “serious vulnerabilities” with the 2020 vote in Maricopa County.
Records released Wednesday by Arizona’s newly elected Democratic attorney general, Kris Mayes, reveal Brnovich ignored the advice and edits of his own staff by releasing the interim report, which was widely criticized at the time as a misleading and inaccurate account of the 2020 election.
As first reported by The Washington Post, Brnovich also withheld two separate reports, prepared while he was still in office, that dismissed claims of voter fraud. Both reports said the claims lacked evidence, were speculative, or in some cases were simply “found to be inaccurate.”
That includes allegations of duplicate votes, bamboo ballots, and even satellites controlled by the Italian military changing votes.
“The results of this exhaustive and extensive investigation show what we have suspected for over two years — the 2020 election in Arizona was conducted fairly and accurately by elections officials,” Mayes said in a statement.
Mayes, who since her election has sought to reorient the office — shifting from investigating claims of fraud to defending voting rights — criticized the work of her predecessor as an unnecessary diversion.
“The ten thousand plus hours spent diligently investigating every conspiracy theory under the sun distracted this office from its core mission of protecting the people of Arizona from real crime and fraud,” Mayes said.
Brnovich, who went on to lose the GOP primary to election denier Blake Masters, could not immediately be reached for comment.
In light of the new records, some Maricopa County officials were furious with Brnovich over his handling of the investigation and the information he chose to release, and more importantly, did not disclose.
“This is outrageous,” Maricopa County Supervisor Thomas Galvin, a Republican, tweeted. “The sham interim report was a political tool. It resulted in death threats on my colleagues. As a lawyer, I’m dismayed that officers of the court were so callous (with) the truth.”
Maricopa County Board Chairman Clint Hickman, also Republican, said he was “absolutely disgusted by the revelation that former Attorney General Mark Bnrovich failed to do his job.”
“This was a gross misuse of his elected office and an appalling waste of taxpayer dollars, as well as a well as a waste of the time and effort of professional investigators,” Hickman said.
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