AG Kris Mayes went hard after Arizona's fake electors. Why didn't former AG Mark Brnovich?

The contrast — and legal stakes — couldn’t be more striking.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, announced the indictment of 11 Republicans who acted together and in public to submit documents falsely claiming to be the state’s rightful presidential electors in 2020.

Her predecessor, Republican Mark Brnovich, left that matter in the hands of the U.S. Justice Department while records show he dispatched dozens of staffers and more than 10,000 hours of their work to investigate claims of election fraud that proved almost entirely without support.

While Brnovich’s approach netted almost no one, Mayes has brought the most politically tremulous case to Arizona perhaps since the AzScam bribery cases more than 30 years ago.

Read indictment: Arizona grand jury's indictment of fake electors

In a video her office released with the announcement of the indictment, Mayes defended the importance of the case.

"I understand for some of you today didn’t come fast enough. I know I will be criticized by others for conducting this investigation at all," she said. "But as I have stated before and will say here again today, I will not allow American democracy to be undermined. It’s too important."

Brnovich could not be immediately reached for comment about his approach.

It played out while Brnovich ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 2022.

In other states, authorities also pursued the fake electors from 2020, alongside the federal probe.

It’s largely why Georgia, Michigan and Nevada have already brought criminal charges against would-be electors in those states.

Fake electors in New Mexico and Pennsylvania used less-definitive language asserting their claim to the presidential votes and won’t face charges there.

Ten fake electors in Wisconsin reached a civil settlement in December ending a 2022 lawsuit targeting them and two lawyers aligned with former President Donald Trump for unlawful use of public resources stemming from the effort there.

A separate criminal investigation there is ongoing.

Arizona, a state that actually had two sets of fake electors, now seeks its own consequences for those involved in a plan intended to help justify delaying or setting aside the certified election results in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. When then-Vice President Mike Pence refused to consider the fake electors, a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol. The indictment unveiled Wednesday charges 11 would-be electors and seven Trump allies.

The case against Arizona’s fake electors remained a nonissue for years while baseless allegations of election fraud commanded official attention and as Brnovich ran for the U.S. Senate under Trump’s watchful eye.

For months, Trump, who in 2018 named Brnovich’s wife to a lifetime position as a federal judge, remained publicly coy about Brnovich’s political future.

He urged Brnovich to bring charges for election fraud growing out of Arizona’s high-profile 2021 recount of Maricopa County’s ballots. Trump resisted an early endorsement in the Senate race, unlike the governor’s race, where he quickly backed Republican Kari Lake in a crowded primary.

In July 2021, his first visit to Arizona after leaving the White House, Trump put pressure on Brnovich by pointing to the state Senate’s partisan and amateurish ballot review, which was winding down.

“Hopefully — and I say this, and I have confidence in it — hopefully, your attorney general, Mark Brnovich ... will take this incredible information given by these incredible warriors and patriots, and he’s going to take it and he’s going to do what everybody knows needs to be done.”

Four months later, after the ballot review concluded President Joe Biden won Maricopa County by a slightly larger margin than the county’s official results showed, Trump lashed out at Brnovich again.

“Whatever happened to the rigged and stolen Arizona Presidential Election that is being investigated, or maybe the words should properly be ‘looked at,’ by Attorney General Mark Brnovich? When will the legislature vote to decertify?” Trump said in a statement at the time.

In January 2022, during an appearance in Florence, Trump repeated his hope that Brnovich would take action on the state Senate’s ballot review. At the same time, he mentioned Senate candidate Blake Masters in a sign of who was best positioned for his eventual support.

In the end, Brnovich’s staff could not find evidence supporting election fraud and it wasn’t scrutinizing charges against the fake electors.

Trump ultimately endorsed Masters, who cast doubt on the 2020 election and won the GOP’s Senate nomination before losing to U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., along with other election deniers on the ballot.

Brnovich finished a distant third in the GOP primary and left office at the end of the year.

By contrast, Mayes made preserving democracy a key theme of her 2022 campaign and cast herself as a bulwark against a coup. She defeated election denier Abe Hamadeh by 280 votes, the narrowest margin in a statewide contest in Arizona’s history.

Shortly after taking office, Mayes released records of Brnovich’s investigation of election fraud. They showed his staff couldn’t find credible evidence of any widespread fraud, including leads provided by Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based company heading the ballot review, and other conservative groups.

The head of the Special Investigations section under Brnovich summarized his department’s work this way in a September 2022 report released once Mayes took office:

“Of the 430 investigations, 22 cases were submitted for prosecution. Agents and support staff have spent more than 10,000 hours investigating allegations of voting irregularities and reviewing alleged instances of illegal voting submitted to our office by private parties. Some of the more high-profile matters involved Cyber Ninjas Incorporated, True the Vote, Verity Vote, and elected officials. In each instance and in each matter, the aforementioned parties did not provide any evidence to support their allegations. The information that was provided was speculative in many instances and when investigated by our agents and support staff, was found to be inaccurate.”

Why The Republic kept fighting: It took years for truth about election 'audit' to emerge

By March 2023, Mayes had opened an investigation into the fake electors matter that Brnovich left essentially untouched.

“I’m not certain that my predecessor did an investigation into the fake electors,” Mayes told the Arizona Mirror at the time. “I will investigate the fake electors’ situation, and I will take very seriously any effort to undermine our democracy. Those are the cases that I will take most seriously.”

To that end, Mayes’ office cast a wide net.

In July, her office confirmed to The Arizona Republic that it was examining the ballot review as part of the probe of the fake electors.

In October, the Washington Post reported that investigators talked to those subjected to Trump’s pressure campaign, including former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, R-Mesa.

In March, Politico reported that Mayes’ team subpoenaed fake electors themselves to face the grand jury, a very rare move that predictably led the potential targets to invoke their 5^th Amendment rights against self-incrimination.

Republican U.S. Reps. Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar of Arizona, two of the most prominent voices amplifying false claims saying the 2020 election was stolen, were subpoenaed, too.

While those involved in the effort to erase Arizona’s actual electors from congressional consideration wouldn’t talk to the grand jury in public, at least some have accused Mayes’ office of wrongdoing in her probe.

“I’m not commenting on the elector situation or the ongoings of the court proceedings,” said state Sen. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek, one of Arizona’s fake electors.

“However, what I can tell you is that we have a wildly corrupt Department of Justice and now a corrupt attorney general who are weaponizing our justice system both nationally and now at the state level to persecute their political enemies, and it’s reprehensible. It’s immoral. It’s evil.”

Elsewhere, pressure has mounted on the other fake electors across the country.

In July, Michigan’s Democratic attorney general charged 16 Republicans with felonies including forgery and conspiracy to commit election forgery.

In August, a Democratic prosecutor in Georgia’s Fulton County brought a racketeering case against Trump and 18 others, including some of that state’s fake electors. Other fake electors escaped indictment because of their cooperation with the prosecution.

In December, Nevada’s Democratic attorney general announced the indictment of six Republicans who participated in the fake elector plan there.

The Georgia case carries up to 20 years behind bars. The most serious charge in Michigan carries up to 14 years in prison. In Nevada, some of the charges carry up to five years in prison.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Fake electors: Kris Mayes strikes hard where Mark Brnovich wouldn't go