The Fight They've Given Us

A decade ago, I had done what they said was impossible.  Overcoming the fierce opposition and devious tactics of the ruling class, and with tremendous help from those who followed my leadership, I had stopped illegal immigration into Arizona.

If that assessment sounds grand, please know it’s not mine.  It’s the accepted historical record written by left-wing journalists who covered me when I was Maricopa County Attorney, the district attorney for greater Phoenix, Arizona.  Elected in the same year then-citizen Donald Trump launched his TV show “The Apprentice,” I campaigned for district attorney on a simple promise:  “Stop illegal immigration.” 

To the shock of many, I kept that promise.  When I ran for reelection four years later, one hard-left columnist for the Arizona Republic wrote a column about me whose title said it all:  “On campaign pledge there’s no doubting Thomas.”  He went so far as to observe that I “may be the only politician in Arizona—maybe the entire country—who did exactly what he told voters that he would do.”

I did this by persuading first the state legislature, then Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, then others to create and/or use tools at the local level of government to fight this illegal influx.  The strategy worked.  In short order, illegal immigrants were streaming out of Arizona in an exodus that rocked the country’s power brokers and made international news.

The Establishment’s Reprisal

Yet by April 2012 the establishment had regrouped, and struck back hard.  After five years of ceaseless investigations cooked up in violation of the State Bar’s own rules, a sham “ethics” trial was held to end my legal career and my threat to the regime.  The Republican Party officially denounced the show-trial proceedings as “baseless and politically motivated.”  Brave and esteemed attorneys and former prosecutors defended me.  Even a broad and diverse swath of columnists for the Arizona Republic joined in challenging the lynching.  It was of no avail.  At the trial’s conclusion, a panel of three legal insiders inevitably voted to disbar me and end my challenge to the ruling class.

I was a graduate of Harvard Law School, where I was a classmate of Barack Obama and Neil Gorsuch.  I had overcome very long odds and the savage hostility of the open-border establishment to be elected and then reelected county prosecutor.  All of this would be swept aside with relentless, dirty machinations very similar to those that one day would take down no less than President Trump.  As the “ethics” trial started, a person described as a “courthouse insider” anonymously and brazenly predicted to the Arizona Republic, “The establishment will take care of Andrew Thomas.”  They went about doing just that.

An account of my disbarment and its destructive impact on Arizona and the rule of law—including the rotten Maricopa County government I tried to clean up—can be read here.  Part of the story was told years ago here and elsewhere.  It’s now standard practice for leftist bar associations to try to disbar conservative attorneys who threaten the Left, especially those involved in politics.  Recently Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s attorneys have been victims of this trend, including Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz.  But I was the first target of this ruthless tactic.

Tribulation followed, which we are told will always happen to those who pick up their cross (2 Tim. 3:12).  The evil and plainly dishonest court ruling handed down against me extinguished more than a shining legal career and an unprecedented law-enforcement record.  It helped usher in our two-tiered justice system.  And it branded me publicly as an outlaw.

One of the oldest punishments in the Anglo-Saxon tradition was “outlawry,” or the declaring of somebody as outside society and its legal protections.  This punishment was considered so inhumane that it was among those banned by the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments.  Yet to destroy the nation’s most effective conservative prosecutor—the man who had improbably stopped illegal immigration, just as he had promised the voters—the courts themselves broke their own rules to throw down this punishment upon me.

After violating my most basic civil rights, and to the dismay of eminent lawyers helping me, an angry, politicized bench falsely accused the former head of the nation’s fourth-largest prosecutor’s office of being essentially a criminal, and one undeserving of rights or respect.  They did this even though two separate grand juries of Arizona citizens, empaneled by my political adversaries (including the Obama Justice Department), ended their investigations and exonerated me of wrongdoing after examining the phony allegations leveled against me.

Uncanceled

Betrayed by a justice system I was taught to believe in, then abandoned by cowardly allies scrambling to be the last eaten by these leftist crocodiles, I fought on.  I ran for Governor of Arizona—and our campaign surprised pundits with how well we did.  My campaign collected almost double the number of voter signatures required for me to qualify for the ballot, as well as $5 contributions from more than 4,500 registered voters so I could gain Clean Elections campaign funding. 

Supported by Republican Party and grassroots leaders and conservative commentator Michelle Malkin, I campaigned door to door among registered Republican voters in Maricopa County.   The greeting I encountered among these citizens was overwhelmingly positive.  Many literally wept at their doorstep for what I had endured.  I lost the race against multimillion-dollar establishment opponents but prompted the state legislature to push for State Bar and judicial reforms the following year.

Through it all, God watched over our family.  I worked for a conservative think tank, then eventually moved with my family to Texas, where, after much adversity, hard work and some fruitful adventures (which I’ll write about down the road), we found ourselves in a blessed place.  I’m now able to turn to other pursuits.

Recently I started a film studio to address Hollywood’s devastation of our culture.  Last year I won awards and recognition from Christian film festivals for a documentary I made about canceled Christians in America.  My film company recently came out with its first feature film, a romantic comedy which is widely available on streaming channels and a number-one hit on the Christian Channel.

And with this column, I return to writing again.  Years ago, before I entered politics, I was one of the hottest young conservative writers in America.  Writing then under my full name, I contributed regularly to what at the time were the nation’s most influential right-leaning outlets.  Foremost was the Wall Street Journal, which excerpted my first book on its op-ed page when I was 28 years old.  My observations were once considered among the nation’s most interesting on the Right, and I was flattered when great periodicals published them. 

Rebuilding Our Republic and Our Culture

Our country has changed much in the years since I laid down my pen—and markedly for the worse on the matters most important to me and many millions of Americans.  The grim predictions I and others made about the trajectory of our society have come to pass, and then some.  Institutions that I inveighed against, and later accused of corruption, now are exposed plainly as described.  My disbarment happened before the term “cancel culture” even existed to explain how such a thing could happen, and almost a decade before an American president who sought to “build the wall” would be worked over similarly.  Such persecution and subjugation of conservative-leaning patriots by the nation’s leftist elites are now standard fare, reported routinely by conservative news media.

If, as these recent events indicate, I am no longer such a highly unusual voice crying in the wilderness, I submit that my unique experiences and efforts nevertheless make my voice distinctive for public conversation on the critical issues of the day.  And so I turn to my keyboard once again.

I anchor this column in the category of politics, where I’ve fought many important battles and about which I’ve written for many years.  Yet I’ll write often about culture as well.  I don’t believe good politics alone can rescue this country, and I sense many if not most patriots would agree with that conclusion today.

Every election season, we’re tempted to try to save the Republic with the “quick fix” of electing the latest batch of Republicans promising to rectify things.  For decades, we’ve watched these leaders ignore and break their promises.  Instead, they focus on doing their real “job,” which is the juggling act of not antagonizing the left-leaning ruling class while doing just enough to get reelected.  To them elections aren’t an opportunity to right the nation, but rather a jobs program for themselves.

This self-serving behavior, while contemptible, is really not surprising.  When the Left controls the monied institutions and power centers of the nation, as it does now, these leaders risk losing their careers if they defy these kingmakers, including the RINO donors who bankroll their campaigns.  Few if any will do so.  The cycle of broken promises continues.

What’s Needed:  A Counterrevolution

To break this cycle, we must end the Left’s stranglehold on these institutions and our culture and the poisonous leftist manipulation of public opinion.  This was the focus of the bulk of my published writings years ago; to this task I return.  I’ll bring to bear my years of experience not only in politics, the immigration wars and the like, but also important insights from my personal life:  cherishing a wife and marriage of nearly 35 years; raising four great children amidst our cultural suicide; overcoming the vicious attacks that our would-be masters deploy against those who challenge their twisted regime.

Reforming our culture and resurrecting values that sustain civilization will be a slow and arduous enterprise, with ultimate success obviously quite uncertain.  Yet as much as our leaders would like to keep kicking the can down the road, this central endeavor can’t be avoided any longer. 

There was a broad consensus among elites when I was elected that illegal immigration was too massive to be stopped. We proved them wrong. We can prove them wrong again in our continuing fight for national and spiritual renewal, drawing from the lessons learned from those successful efforts and the Trump years.

I’ll focus on the long game and how we can win over time through a difficult but essential counterrevolution of the heart, mind and soul.  Few write in these terms and with these objectives because it is a hard slog, difficult in both analysis and execution.  Crafting a long-term strategy that can achieve victory against such malevolent opposition is dour and daunting, yet doable.  It’s understandable commentators frequently cater to politics-as-entertainment.  Many flourish by offering videos of them “owning” confused, shallow-thinking people who identify with the Left, making some of them look like fools.  I can assure you from hard experience their leaders are anything but fools.  They are winning.  We must do better, and soon.

Drawing from my years of political combat as well as writing books and articles on not just politics, but history, philosophy, religion and other helpful areas, I’ll put forth original thoughts and analysis on tough matters neglected by too many opinion leaders.  There is one more thing that distinguishes my offerings from those of so many politicians and pundits holding forth on issues of the day.  I’ll say it bluntly.  The experience and insights I share come from someone who never shaded his opinions, nor sold out his constituents, for self-gain.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read why I write, and what I aim to do, with this newsletter and effort.  And thank you for your self-evident love of the God who sustains us and the Republic He gave us, and for your companionship on this journey.