Darkness Falls on Arizona

Leftist Indictments, Disbarments Usher In Totalitarianism

As I watch my former state of Arizona descend further into nascent totalitarianism, I feel somewhat like a shipwreck survivor observing the vessel sinking as it takes down some of my treasured possessions with it.  I lost my law license and more in Arizona due to the same shameless machinations now engulfing the Grand Canyon State writ large.  The Left has built there a totalitarian infrastructure backed by brutal lawfare that reveals itself, with each passing day, with growing brazenness.

First Batch of Indictments Arrives

The first installment of Democrat-led indictments involving election practices in Arizona has been dropped, sending an unmistakable message for the 2024 elections. Last week Democrat (and former RINO) Attorney General Kris Mayes announced the indictment of the two Republican members of the three-member board of supervisors of Cochise County, a border county.  The two allegedly committed crimes because they hesitated before ultimately signing off on the 2020 vote totals in their county.  One supervisor, Tom Crosby, is represented by a Phoenix attorney who himself is being threatened with disbarment for his attempts to litigate the 2020 elections.

Mayes’ office promises a “robust” investigation of other 2020-related controversies, presumably including the alternate elector slates filled by Trump allies.  Other Democrat prosecutors in swing states are doing the same, including most famously Georgia and, more recently, Nevada.  Of course, Hawaii Democrats put forward alternate electors in the 1960 presidential elections without any criminal repercussions.  These strategies to preserve good-faith objections to controversial election outcomes now have been decreed felonies by the Democrat Left as they consolidate their power. 

From my days in politics in Arizona, I know a number of the Republicans who agreed to serve there as alternate electors.  They are good people and don’t deserve their fate any more than I did.  But justice is not a priority to the people targeting them.

Timing is important.  My guess is these political indictments will be uncorked in the spring of 2024.  That’s based on my experience with a number of the same actors.  In the spring of 2008, when I was up for reelection as Maricopa County Attorney, the Left and its allies generated frivolous State Bar investigations to try to hobble me (in part because I stood up to the very tyranny that has now taken root).  Against all odds, I beat back this first set of bar complaints and was reelected; the Left learned from the experience and made sure to deliver a kill shot through the State Bar and pliable judges four years later.

Disbarments Looming

Virtually all of the attorneys who questioned 2020 and 2022 election practices in Arizona have been hit with financial sanctions and State Bar investigations targeting their law licenses.  Their ranks include Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz.  Their lawsuits went nowhere, including litigation challenging eye-popping Election Day funny business in 2022.  Those electoral practices effectively suppressed the GOP vote in a manner that never would’ve been tolerated had black voters been similarly disadvantaged.

The latest futile lawsuit was GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s attempt to inspect 2022 ballots.  Long-time leftist judge John Hannah dismissed the case and accused her of undermining confidence in our democracy.  The circular reasoning he employed, without any scrutiny or blowback, was as follows: 

1.     There’s nothing to see here—our democracy is fine.

2.     If you challenge Statement Number 1, you undermine confidence in our democracy.

3.     Ergo, get lost.

Of course, questioning the health of our democracy is always fair game when Democrats lose.

Hannah at least offered some reasoning.  In contrast, and to show a more advanced stage of totalitarian lawfare, last week the New York Court of Appeals upheld a gag order on President Trump in his business-license case with a single sentence lacking any explanation at all.  Trump’s attorneys complain they are now forbidden from making objections to the conduct of court personnel even during the course of the trial, impeding them from representing their client in the most basic way. The Left knows they owe us no rationale for their increasingly flagrant totalitarianism and are better off not offering one.

The State Bar of Arizona has just announced it is launching investigations of Lake’s attorneys.  One Lake attorney released a poignant video, filmed in some desert locale, saying he expects to be disbarred and calling out attorneys who have not spoken up in his defense.  I sympathize, having experienced the same thing in 2010-2012 when my law license was unconstitutionally shredded.  But that attorney and others now on the chopping block were as silent during my lynching as their credentialed brethren and other onlookers are today regarding their plight.  Self-preservation still reigns supreme, as all seek to be the last devoured by the crocodiles. Good luck finding MAGA lawyers willing to fight in Arizona in the 2024 elections.

2022 MAGA Champions in Peril

The hard reality of the totalitarian trap sprung in Arizona is increasingly apparent as the 2024 elections take shape.  The three MAGA champions of 2022 who shone most brightly outside Arizona were Kari Lake, Blake Masters and Abe Hamadeh, who ran for governor, U.S. Senate and state attorney general.  All three are locked in battles for public office in 2024 whose establishment-driven dynamics do not bode well for them.

Lake and Hamadeh are simultaneously continuing their legal battles to claim the state offices they sought in 2022.  But these are a long shot, given the difficulty of even recruiting attorneys for these suits, much less winning decisions from judges cowering before an emboldened and monied Left.  The contours of their 2024 races are no less imposing.

Lake is the presumptive GOP nominee for the U.S. Senate seat in 2024.  Yet she faces a well-funded Democrat, Congressman Ruben Gallego, and an incumbent Independent, Kyrsten Sinema.  Polling and experience show Sinema poised to siphon off moderate Republicans from Lake.  Lake has reportedly embarked on a goodwill tour to try to win over some of these moderates, or at least their more prominent members.  Lake denies this, and the strategy is unlikely to succeed in any event unless she fully repents of what made her a MAGA favorite.  That is the Hobson’s choice the establishment is thrusting on her.  How, for instance, does she begin to supplicate Cindy McCain, who now serves as an ambassador in the Biden administration?

Masters and Hamadeh have redirected their sights towards Congress, declaring their candidacies for a seat vacated suddenly by RINO incumbent Debbie Lesko.  Both should have ample resources to run credible campaigns.  However, the Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, Ben Toma, is a RINO well-positioned to win the race as these MAGA candidates split the conservative vote.  Lesko has endorsed Toma.  Other conservative candidates will further splinter the MAGA vote.

Who is to blame for this tragic state of affairs?  The Left’s takeover of America started in earnest in higher education, where Marxist-inspired professors used their collective muscle to bludgeon their opponents, then brainwash and direct the next generation of American leaders.  I wrote of these trends in a book two decades ago, foretelling a future that was not hard to see.  In Arizona specifically, leftist Democrats such as Governor Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Terry Goddard put meat on these theoretical bones with power plays that earned no effective rebuke.  The Fake News always does its part.

But arguably the most culpable figures were RINOs, the Pharisees of our time who profitably collaborated with the new totalitarianism.  U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona exemplified them best and led them ably.  He showed the smart play was to smirk at the GOP grassroots enough to convince the Fake News he wasn’t part of the problem, while amassing enough ruling-class campaign money and influence to smash his GOP opponents and die in office.  The machine he left behind (properly denounced by Lake) consisted of numerous affiliated RINO politicians, lobbyists and miscellaneous hangers-on in the shadows who’ve prospered in exchange for their fidelity.  The grassroots didn’t realize they were being hoodwinked until right around the time McCain left the earth to meet at last a Judge he could not snooker.  By then the damage was done, and it appears irreparable.

Arizona is a gorgeous state with many wonderful people.  It does not deserve the fate now befalling it.  Nor does the nation whose political future depends in no small measure on what Arizona does in 2024.