Scathing Rebuke To AG's Election Report From Maricopa County Leaders

PHOENIX, AZ — The Maricopa County recorder, along with the county's Board of Supervisors, in a scathing letter sent Wednesday accused Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich of playing politics, making assumptions and ignoring evidence in his interim report on a criminal investigation into the 2020 election.

"When election integrity is challenged, we have the collective responsibility to investigate and report our conclusions thoroughly and honestly," the supervisors wrote in their letter to Brnovich. "We have. You have not. The 2020 election was fair and the results indisputable. Rather than being truthful about what your office has learned about the election, you have omitted pertinent information, misrepresented facts, and cited distorted data to seed doubt about the conduct of elections in Maricopa County."

Brnovich's investigation came after the infamous Cyber Ninjas audit of the 2020 general election in Maricopa County, ordered by the state Senate. The results of that review confirmed that now-President Joe Biden won Maricopa County, but the Cyber Ninjas still claimed there were various irregularities in the election process.

In reaction to Maricopa County's letter and accompanying news conference Wednesday morning, Brnovich posted a response video on Twitter.

"We already live in very divisive times and instead of casting dispersions or casting stones, we should be working together to address issues so that everyone, no matter who they are, can have confidence in the electoral process," Brnovich said.

Brnovich added that instead of attacking him, the Maricopa County supervisors should work on ensuring that issues that he brought up in his report don't happen again in upcoming elections, such as 200,000 ballots not being transported in the proper chain of custody.

But in their letter, the supervisors pointed out that the attorney general had not asked for explanations for some of the issues he questioned, but seemed to make assumptions instead.

In his interim report, Brnovich said that the number of ballots rejected because of missing signatures, or that had signatures rejected was suspiciously low, especially when compared with past elections in Maricopa County. Brnovich said there could be valid explanations, but indicated that the county was less diligent in 2020 with signature reviews than in years past.

The county retorted that there were many reasons for fewer ballots being rejected in 2020. In 2020 the county made an effort to catch unsigned ballot envelopes before they were deposited, the supervisors said. It also hired more than 40 temporary workers in 2020 to cure ballots — basically to contact those who voted by mail to ensure their ballot envelope had a valid signature that matched the state's signature on file for that voter.

"That you did not ask your investigators about these developments (or if you did, that you ignored their answers), and that you did not thoroughly research these developments prior to writing you 'interim report,' and that you instead chose to jump to the insinuation the the County had acted unlawfully, is woefully inadequate and irresponsible for an Attorney General, let alone any attorney," the supervisors wrote.

The supervisors pointed out that in Brnovich's interim report he mentioned individual voter fraud uncovered through his investigation, but no specific cases were cited in the report itself. A link included in the report goes to a listing of 34 cases of voter fraud in Arizona committed since 2010. Many of those cases did not happen in Maricopa County and were not related to the 2020 election.

The supervisors also took issue with some of Brnovich's comments during an April 7 interview with Steve Bannon on the former Trump advisor's podcast.

During the interview Brnovich told Bannon that Maricopa County had used artificial intelligence to review ballot signatures in 2020, but the county pointed out that Brnovich's investigators had been told repeatedly that AI was not used for signature verification in 2020.

"In short, your office knew that all signatures were verified by human beings," the supervisors wrote. "You state publicly the opposite. Repeatedly."

Brnovich is courting Trump’s endorsement for his run for one of Arizona's U.S. Senate seats, in a race against Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.