Former Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich allegedly hid records made by his investigators that refuted claims of election fraud in the state during the 2020 elections.
The discovery comes from documents released by Brnovich's successor, Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes. She took office last month and now said that the records showed that the election in 2020 was "conducted fairly and accurately by election officials."
Concealment of Refuted Election Fraud Claims
The former attorney general, who was a member of the Republican Party, failed to release the summary of investigative findings in March 2022. The reports ruled out many election fraud claims that former President Donald Trump's allies and supporters spread.
However, a month later, he released an "interim report" claiming his investigation found serious vulnerabilities that must be addressed. It also raised questions about the state of the 2020 election in Arizona.
His April report was released despite pushback from his investigators, who claimed that their observations disputed some of the arguments. Brnovich, who at the time was in the middle of a GOP primary for the US Senate, argued that he was not doing enough to prosecute election fraud, as per Yahoo News.
The former attorney general, whose primary Senate bid was unsuccessful, was also found to have failed to release a September memo that refuted election conspiracies. This includes allegations of dead or duplicate voters, pre-marked ballots flown in from Asia, election servers being connected to the internet, and satellite manipulation headed by the Italian military.
The September memo read that the parties failed to provide evidence to support their allegations in each instance. It added that the information they spread was purely speculative and was found to be inaccurate after agents investigated the matters.
That particular memo was among the documents that Mayes released on Wednesday, all of which describe an all-encompassing probe that became a top priority of Brnovich's investigators. They spent over 10,000 hours sifting through 638 complaints, where they opened 430 investigations and referred 22 cases for prosecution.
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Spreading Conspiracy Theories
According to the Washington Post, the recently released records show that Brnovich's office privately disregarded fact checks that state investigators provided while publicly promoting incomplete or inaccurate accounts of the office's work.
The reformer attorney general's concealment of the reports and Trump's and his allies' spread of misinformation regarding election fraud made Arizona the epicenter of distrust in the democratic process. The situation eroded confidence in the 2020 election as well as in subsequent elections.
The investigations came and went as various politicians, including Sen. Wendy Rogers and Rep. Mark Finchem, claimed they had evidence of election fraud but chose to stay silent. They took advantage of their stance to raise millions of dollars in donations from their supporters.
One report noted that Finchem publicly stated that he had a source that said more than 30,000 fraudulent votes were registered in Pima County. When asked to meet with the politician to discuss the claims, he did not repeat the allegations, acknowledging that he did not have evidence of fraud, said AZCentral.
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