Arizona governor seeks ethics review of former attorney general

PHOENIX — Arizona’s Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, is seeking a review of what her office alleges was “likely unethical conduct” by the state’s former attorney general, Mark Brnovich.

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.

The letter, signed by Hobbs’s general counsel, Bo Dul, calls the conduct “harmful to our democracy, our State, and the legal profession itself.”

Brnovich dismissed the allegations. “Katie Hobbs is wrong,” he said in a statement. “This is another misguided attempt by her to defame and cancel a political opponent instead of addressing the serious issues facing our state.”

The former attorney general did not respond to earlier questions from The Washington Post about the records but released a statement to local media saying he was “proud” of his office’s work on “election integrity.”

“While subjected to severe criticism from all sides of the political spectrum during the course of our investigations, we did our due diligence to run all complaints to ground,” Brnovich said in that statement. “Where we were able to debunk rumors and conspiracies, we did so. Nevertheless, we also identified areas we believe the legislature and county officials should address to ensure confidence in future elections.”

The state bar has received at least eight complaints against Brnovich related to his office’s probe of the 2020 election, said a spokesman for the association, which regulates the professional conduct of lawyers and has the power to reprimand or disbar its members.

Brnovich’s Democratic successor, Kris Mayes, released the documents to The Post after numerous requests, lodged initially while Brnovich was in office.

The records released by Mayes reveal that Brnovich’s team brushed off edits made by investigators when he released an “Interim Report” last year warning of “serious vulnerabilities” with voting in Maricopa County. Memos and other documents also show that the then-attorney general sat on more conclusive reports that systematically debunked fraud claims leveled by state lawmakers and self-styled “election integrity” groups.

Brnovich marshaled the resources of his office to investigate those claims while he was competing with MAGA-aligned candidates in a GOP primary for U.S. Senate. He lost that primary in August and left the attorney general’s office in January.

“The people of Arizona had a right to know this information before the 2022 election,’ Mayes said in an interview with The Post earlier this week. ‘Maricopa County election officials had a right to know that they were cleared of wrongdoing. And every American had a right to know that the 2020 election in Arizona, which in part decided the presidency, was conducted accurately and fairly,”

The letter from Hobbs’s office to the state bar argues that the news reports and documents “exposed what is likely unethical conduct” by Brnovich. It also notes that the conduct “appears to have coincided” with the period in which Brnovich and other attorneys in his office were negotiating and then operating under what’s called a “diversion agreement,” an alternative to disciplinary sanction that might otherwise result from bar complaints and instead often involves training and other types of remediation.

Those complaints alleged that Brnovich shirked his responsibilities as the state’s top law enforcement officer to represent two state agencies, the secretary of state’s office and the Arizona Board of Regents, the governing body of Arizona’s public university system. Hobbs was Arizona’s secretary of state at the time of the complaints and the diversion agreements, which were revealed in early 2022.

The letter from Hobbs’s office asks the state bar to review the files released this week and “take any appropriate action.”

Stanley-Becker reported from Washington.