Mark Brnovich disgraced Arizona and its institutions. That can't go unpunished

Mark Brnovich has a verbal tic.

When he speaks, he says, “At the end of the day …” as a kind of filler, over and over, as if he needs a moment to think of what he’ll say next.

After about 10 of these “end of the day” segues in an April 2021 interview with the conservative Newsmax channel, Brnovich said it was important to respect the Arizona Senate’s highly partisan review of votes, a process many in the state called “The Fraudit” or “clown show.”

Why?

“So we make sure we do everything we can to ensure the integrity of the (2020 election) results, because we want people to have confidence in the results.”

At the end of the day, that was a crock.

Mark Brnovich sat on his office's reports

Today we know that then-Attorney General Mark Brnovich would eventually bury and distort a detailed investigation that would have vindicated the people who ran the 2020 Maricopa County presidential election and helped restore trust in our democracy.

His own investigators had spent more than 10,000 hours examining some 430 reports of election fraud and suspected malfeasance. They debunked virtually all of them, but no one told the people of Arizona.

At the end of the day, Mark Brnovich sat on the results. In March 2022, his investigators prepared their report and their boss smothered it.

At the Capitol:Hearing spotlights far-fetched election conspiracies

Then in April 2022 he released his own “interim report” pointing to “serious vulnerabilities” in the electoral system and ignoring the pre-publication edits suggested by his investigators, who were inclined to tell the truth.

In September 2022, his team produced an “Election Review Summary” that again defended the integrity of the election. And again, Brnovich sat on it.

He valued his election more than the truth

Last week, new Attorney General Kris Mayes revealed Brnovich’s investigative shell game and asserted it was not only a betrayal of the people of Arizona and his office, but a colossal waste of time.

“The results of this exhaustive and extensive investigation show what we have suspected for over two years – the 2020 election in Arizona was conducted fairly and accurately by elections officials,” Mayes said. “The 10,000-plus 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.”

Editorial:Elections can be fast, accurate or cheap. Which do we want?

County election workers and officials were enduring smears and death threats from extremists who believed every conspiracy theory spun by their defeated president, Donald Trump. But none of that moved Brnovich to put out the truth, that the election in Maricopa County was honest.

At the time, Brnovich was running for U.S. Senate and needed those Trump voters to win the Republican primary. But Trump would ultimately reject and berate him and give his endorsement to upstart Blake Masters.

The then-Arizona attorney general was playing both sides against the middle, asserting to general audiences that Trump had lost the 2020 election, while intimating to conservative audiences that Trump got robbed.

Why did he hide the results? He won't say

On an April 2022 podcast, he told former Trump aide Steve Bannon that there was yet no evidence of election-rigging. “It is frustrating. It’s frustrating to all of us, because I think we all know what happened in 2020.”

“I assure you Steve, I understand how serious this is. I understand why people are frustrated.”

Last week, as the news was breaking on the Brnovich investigations, he remained largely silent. He told ABC 15, “While subjected to severe criticism from all sides of the political spectrum during the course of our investigations, we did our due diligence to run all complaints to ground.”

But he didn’t answer the pressing question: Why did he hide the results?

Now the new governor of Arizona, Katie Hobbs, is calling on the Arizona State Bar to investigate Brnovich for “likely unethical conduct.”

At least 18 bar charges have been filed to date against Brnovich, according to a bar spokesperson. The former attorney general also has become a figure of state and national derision.

Brnovich said in a statement that “Katie Hobbs is wrong. This is another misguided attempt by her to defame and cancel a political opponent instead of addressing the serious issues facing our state.”

Brnovich's flaw? A lack of core values

But he is not a “political opponent” of Katie Hobbs.

Brnovich is a spent force in Arizona politics. He was the moment he lost his party’s primary to a hardly known Masters.

He is further disgraced and diminished by an investigation that would have helped create greater confidence in our electoral process.

Mark Brnovich’s fatal flaw was a lack of core values.

He put winning Donald Trump’s affection ahead of the responsibilities of his office. He blew with whatever wind could help him win his next election.

At the end of the day, that is a blight on this state and our institutions, and it cannot go unpunished.

This is an opinion of The Arizona Republic's editorial board.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Mark Brnovich disgraced Arizona. That can't go unpunished