Former Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s office found in a March 2022 report that a range of voter fraud allegations stemming from the Arizona Senate’s audit of the 2020 Maricopa County election were either “unfounded” or couldn’t be corroborated. 

Even so, in an inflammatory “interim report” issued the next month, the former AG heavily suggested there were problems in the election. 

“We have reached the conclusion that the 2020 election in Maricopa County revealed serious vulnerabilities that must be addressed and raises questions about the 2020 election in Arizona,” Brnovich wrote in the April 2022 letter. 

Months later, a September 2022 report prepared by investigators in the AG’s office was even more definitive than the March review: out of hundreds of allegations of election fraud submitted to the office, only five cases had enough evidence to merit prosecution. And, the September report found, the high-profile accusations by conservative lawmakers and groups connected to the audit like Cyber Ninjas, True the Vote and Verity Vote, were uniformly baseless. 

“In each instance and in each matter, the aforementioned parties did not provide any evidence to support their allegations,” the report states. 

But neither the March nor the September report were published by Brnovich, who left office last month. 

The disconnect between results of the internal investigation of voter fraud claims and public statements was highlighted in documents released on Wednesday by Brnovich’s successor, Attorney General Kris Mayes. The documents included the March and September 2022 reports, as well as a document showing suggested edits to a draft of the April 2022 interim report. 

Mayes said the documents show that her predecessor’s commitment to digging into election fraud allegations was a waste of time. 

“The 10,000+ 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,” she wrote in a tweet following release of the documents on Wednesday. 

The March and September reports amount to an encyclopedic cataloging of the wide-ranging voter fraud allegations that have swirled around Arizona since the state’s 2020 presidential election, in which Joe Biden carried the state. 

Former President Donald Trump never admitted defeat in that race and his claims of election fraud have helped make Arizona ground zero for a nationwide movement to sow doubt about elections. Rejection of the 2020 election results was an animating force in the campaigns of top Arizona Republicans in the 2022 cycle, including gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters and Secretary of State candidate Mark Finchem. 

Brnovich was also a candidate in last year’s elections, though he never made it out of the Republican primary. In the months leading up to the August GOP race, Brnovich faced extraordinary pressure from Trump and other election officials to announce prosecutions connected to what they called widespread voter fraud. 

In the April interim report, Brnovich seemed to be talking to those officials when he insisted that his office was “fully engaged in successfully defending Arizona’s election integrity laws,” and had “left no stone unturned in the aftermath of the 2020 election.” 

But the documents released this week underscore that Brnovich’s office knew a lot more than it was letting on in 2022. Namely, the AG’s extensive investigation of fraud claims had found that almost all the allegations weren’t true. (Neither the March nor the September report were publicly released by Brnovich.) 

The September report said the AGO received 638 complaints, which led to 430 investigations and, eventually, 22 cases referred for prosecutions. Those prosecutions include cases of individuals voting using a ballot intended for a dead relative, as well as a case in Yuma County in which someone unlawfully dropped off others’ ballots for them. The report adds that even the cases that were not investigated received an “initial review and assessment.” 

The report highlights the election fraud allegations made by Sen. Sonny Borelli, R-Lake Havasu City, Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, and Finchem, a former state representative from Oro Valley. When AGO investigators asked them about their statements, the lawmakers apparently changed their tune. “When speaking with our agents – and under circumstances where ARS 13.2907.01 (False Reporting to Law Enforcement Agencies; Classification) could be applicable, the elected officials did not repeat or make such assertions,” the September report states. 

The difference between the AG’s investigations and Brnovich’s public claims comes through starkly in a document that offered “additional considerations” for the April 2022 interim report. That document, sent to other staff by investigator Reginald Grigsby, suggested that Brnovich tone down some of the language in an early draft of the report. 

In the original draft, Brnovich wrote at one point: “Our overall assessment is that the current election system in Maricopa County involving the verification and handling of early ballots is broke.” 

The “additional considerations” document recommended saying something quite different: “Investigators examined the policy and procedures followed by the MCRO relative to signature verification. SIS staff concluded the MCRO followed its policy/procedures as they relate to signature verification; we did not uncover any criminality or fraud having been committed in this area during the 2020 general election.”  

In the end, the final interim report contained new text: “We can report that there are problematic system-wide issues that relate to early ballot handling and verification. The early ballot signature verification system in Maricopa County is insufficient to guard against abuse.” 

The Wednesday release was met with a mix of reactions from the election officials who have faced pressure and even death threats connected to election fraud allegations 

Maricopa County Supervisor Clint Hickman wrote in a news release that he was “absolutely disgusted by the revelations.”  

“Not only did (Brnovich) ignore his own investigators in issuing a different, ‘interim report,’ he falsely suggested wrongdoing by Maricopa County, never correcting the record and blatantly never sharing the team’s final report with the public. This was a gross misuse of his elected office and an appalling waste of taxpayer dollars, as well as a waste of the time and effort of professional investigators,” Hickman added. 

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer said he was glad the documents set the record straight about his office’s cooperation with the election probe; Brnovich had claimed that the recorder wasn’t forthcoming, something Richer strongly denied. 

“I’m pleased to see the notes and documents released today distinctly show the ways in which our office cooperated with and supported the Attorney General’s office,” he said in an emailed statement.