Tag: prosecution

Wisconsin Election Integrity Journalist Who Exposed Allegedly Illegal Democratic ‘Smurfing’ Donations Arrested

Rachel Alexander
Peter Bernegger

Peter Bernegger, president of Election Watch in Wisconsin, was arrested last week after filing complaints against officials and candidates he exposed for accepting donations allegedly facilitated by progressive activists in the names of people who were unaware of them. He was charged with a felony, simulating a legal process.

Bernegger posted on X after posting bail and being released, “This is politically motivated where they are trying to shut me up, to shut us all up. For those who don’t know, this is the second time they have come after me; the first time was dismissed in 15 minutes when the judge learned the truth of the matter.”

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Arizona Republican Leaders Submit Brief Defending Cochise County Supervisor Tom Crosby from AG Kris Mayes’ Prosecution over 2022 Election Integrity Efforts

Rachel Alexander
Warren Petersen Ben Toma

State Senate President Warren Petersen (R-Mesa) and Speaker of the House Ben Toma (R-Peoria) filed a Motion for Leave to File Brief as Amicus Curiae in the prosecution of Cochise County Supervisor Tom Crosby on March 8.

Crosby, along with Cochise County Supervisor Peggy Judd, was indicted by a grand jury in November 2023 for briefly delaying canvassing of the 2022 election in order to investigate the laws that were broken. Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes charged them with the class 5 felonies of Interference With an Election Officer—even though they were in part administering elections themselves as officials—and conspiracy since they both voted together to delay the canvassing.

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Trump’s Former Attorney John Eastman in Good Spirits About the Ongoing Lawfare Against Him, Both Prosecution and Disbarment Proceedings

Rachel Alexander
John Eastman

Trump’s former attorney and constitutional legal scholar, John Eastman, who is undergoing lawfare as a result of his representation of Trump in the 2020 election challenges, is facing multiple legal proceedings but is in good spirits.

Eastman, widely considered one of the top legal scholars on the right, who founded the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, served as dean for Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law, and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, told The Arizona Sun Times during an interview that he remains “cheerful but defiant.”

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Trump’s Former Attorney John Eastman in Good Spirits About the Ongoing Lawfare Against Him, Both Prosecution and Disbarment Proceedings

Rachel Alexander
John Eastman

Trump’s former attorney and constitutional legal scholar, John Eastman, who is undergoing lawfare as a result of his representation of Trump in the 2020 election challenges, is facing multiple legal proceedings but is in good spirits.

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D.C. Court of Appeals Panel Gives Trump’s Former DOJ Official Jeffrey Clark a Unanimous Victory on Subpoena Violating His Fifth Amendment Rights

Rachel Alexander

A panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled unanimously on Monday that the D.C. Bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel (ODC) unconstitutionally subpoenaed documents from former President Donald Trump’s former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark in violation of his Fifth Amendment rights.

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Cochise County Supervisors Fight AG Kris Mayes’ Prosecution Over Delaying Vote Certification; File Motions to Dismiss, Request New Grand Jury

Rachel Alexander
Cochise County Supervisors Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd

Cochise County Supervisors Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd are fighting back against Attorney General Kris Mayes’ prosecution of them for voting to delay certification of the 2022 election by three days. The pair filed motions last week requesting that the case be dismissed and challenging the grand jury’s finding of probable cause against them. 

In Crosby’s Motion to Dismiss, which Judd joined later, Crosby’s attorney Dennis Wilenchik said, “The criminal statute involved is vague and ambiguous and overbroad, and unconstitutional as applied here to a member of a Board of Supervisors of a County voting in his official capacity. The case was brought purely for political purposes by the Attorney General and is an egregious abuse of her powers.”

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Mohave County Supervisor Ron Gould Sues AG Kris Mayes over Her Threats to Prosecute Him for Voting to Hand Count Ballots

Rachel Alexander
Mayes Gould

Mohave County Supervisor Ron Gould filed a lawsuit against Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes over her threat to prosecute him if he voted in favor of conducting a hand count of the 2024 election. He asked the court in the complaint, which was filed on January 19, to rule “[t]hat Plaintiff should not be subjected to threats and intimidation by the Attorney General for voting to have hand counting be the primary initial method of vote tabulation.”

Represented by Wilenchik & Bartness, Gould described the threat, “This case is about an elected official potentially losing his liberty and being jailed as a criminal, if Defendant Mayes is correct, for voting according to his conscience, and pursuant to the will of his constituents, based on election statutes that appear not to bar his intended support for vote counting based on hand counting and not the use of electronic voting machines.”

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State Bar of Arizona Suspends License of Former Maricopa County Prosecutor April Sponsel for Two Years Over Prosecuting Antifa

Rachel Alexander

The State Bar of Arizona’s disciplinary judge Margaret Downie, along with a hearing panel of two others, suspended the law license of longtime Maricopa County prosecutor April Sponsel on December 19 mainly for prosecuting multiple people at an Antifa riot that took place in downtown Phoenix on October 17, 2020 after the death of George Floyd. The 71-page Decision and Order Imposing Sanctions also faulted her decision to charge a thief accused of assaulting police officers. The Arizona bar has come under increasing criticism in recent years for targeting conservative attorneys.

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Maricopa County GOP Passes Unanimous Resolution Calling for Impeachment of Arizona AG Kris Mayes Over Prosecution Lawfare, Hostility to Election Integrity

Rachel Alexander

The Maricopa County Republican Committee (MCRC) unanimously passed a resolution on December 5 calling on the Arizona House of Representatives to impeach Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes (pictured above). The resolution cited Mayes’ record opposing election integrity, notably her prosecution of two Cochise County Supervisors over delaying the certification of the 2022 election for three days.

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Former Trump DOJ Official Jeffrey Clark Appeals Denial of Removal of Bar Disciplinary Trial to Federal Court

Rachel Alexander

Jeffrey Clark, an attorney who served at high levels of the Department of Justice under former President Donald Trump, is undergoing both prosecution and bar disciplinary proceedings for his slight involvement with the 2020 election challenges.

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Democratic Arizona AG Kris Mayes Gets Grand Jury to Indict Two Cochise County Supervisors With Felonies Over Delaying Certification of Election

Rachel Alexander

Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes, who narrowly won her election by 280 votes – the closest statewide race in Arizona’s history – convinced a grand jury to indict two Cochise County Supervisors for briefly delaying certification of the 2022 election in order to investigate the laws that were broken. Cochise County Supervisors Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd, both Republicans, also unsuccessfully attempted to conduct a hand count of the election. Mayes sued them over the delay last November.

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CBS News’ ’60 Minutes’ Omits Key Facts, Makes Incorrect Statements Covering the Lawfare Against Trump’s Former Attorney John Eastman

Rachel Alexander

The television news magazine show 60 Minutes aired a story on CBS Sunday about the lawfare against Donald Trump’s former attorney and constitutional legal scholar John Eastman, which repeated much of the mainstream media’s talking points about his legal advice to Trump regarding the illegal activity in the 2020 election.

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A.G. Kris Mayes Initiates Prosecution of Cochise County Supervisor Who Questioned Voting Machines, Delayed Certification, and Attempted to Hand Count Ballots

Rachel Alexander

Cochise County Supervisor Tom Crosby, who sought to eliminate the use of voting machine tabulators in the 2022 election, delay certification, and conduct a hand count of ballots, received a grand jury summons from Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes earlier this month. The summons does not indicate what he is being investigated for, but he has tangled with Democratic officials over his concerns about election fraud.

Crosby and fellow Cochise County Supervisor Peggy Judd voted 2-1 against the lone Democrat on the board in favor of a hand count of last year’s election in October 2022, after receiving a letter from Arizona Corporation Commissioner Jim O’Connor threatening legal action if voting machine tabulators were used. The two also voted to delay certification of last year’s election, prompting Mayes to sue the supervisors.

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D.C. Bar Refuses to Allow Former Trump DOJ Attorney to Postpone Disbarment Proceedings

Rachel Alexander

Jeffrey Clark, an attorney who served at high levels of the Department of Justice under former President Donald Trump, is being stonewalled in his request to delay a disbarment trial while criminal proceedings in Georgia go forward.

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Former State Elections Director Under Hobbs Testifies at Disbarment Trial of Trump’s Attorney John Eastman

Rachel Alexander

The disbarment trial of Trump’s attorney and constitutional legal scholar John Eastman resumed this past week on Thursday and Friday, and continues next on Tuesday, September 5. On Friday, Eastman’s attorney Randy Miller cross-examined the State Bar of California’s expert witness Matthew Seligman, an election fraud denier and attorney who serves as a  fellow at the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, and former Secretary of State Elections Director Bo Dul also testified.

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, posted on X regarding the proceedings, “Kangaroo court proceedings in California to disbar John Eastman, one of the nation’s leading constitutional lawyers, for daring to provide legal advice on the Biden election controversy.”

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Prosecutors Signal They Will Try to Make the Case Donald Trump Did Not Really Believe There Was 2020 Election Fraud in Arizona

Rachel Alexander

Prosecutors are reportedly attempting build a case to show that Donald Trump did not really believe there was 2020 election fraud in several states, including Arizona. They convinced a federal grand jury in Washington D.C. to indict Trump on August 1 for challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election, blaming him for the raucous protest at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

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Commentary: Joe Biden’s Race Against the Truth

Arizona Sun Times Staff
Joe Biden at desk, looking over documents

Joe Biden has about 17 months left as an elected politician — if he is lucky. That projection guides most of the inexplicable and shameless behavior of the Department of Justice and Biden himself. View Biden as in a race against the truth. Will he be physically and mentally able to complete his term and head to retirement before his decades-long crimes of corruption catch up to him?

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DOJ, Attorney General Kris Mayes Investigating Arizona’s Alternate Slate of Presidential Electors from 2020

Rachel Alexander

Politically motivated prosecutors have begun charging the slates of alternate electors from the 2020 presidential election with crimes, and are now investigating Arizona’s alternate electors. Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes campaigned on a platform promising to investigate the alternate 22 Republican electors. No one has been ever charged with a crime for participating in an alternate electoral slate until now, even though there have been alternate electoral slates presented throughout history. 

Mayes said during an interview in February, “There has to be a deterrent to this happening again. We can’t have this occurring again in Arizona — or in the country.”

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Arizona Republicans Condemn the Prosecution of Donald Trump

Rachel Alexander

The Arizona Republican Party (AZGOP) Executive Committee and the Maricopa County Republican Committee Executive Guidance Committee (MCRC) issued unanimous resolutions last week condemning the indictment of former President Donald Trump secured by Democratic New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Other prominent Republicans in the state including Kari Lake also spoke up denouncing the prosecution. 

Both GOP resolutions contained similar language, strongly condemning the “political persecution” and “political witch hunt.” The AZGOP resolution emphasized that the Republican Party stands for “upholding justice and the rule of law,” and criticized the Democrats’ “blatant disregard for justice.” The statement concluded by condemning “the weaponization of the American justice system against political opponents of the current justice system.”

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Commentary: Trump Should Fight Fire with Fire

Arizona Sun Times Staff

John Adams may have summed up the American experiment best: “We are a government of laws, not men.” This was the origin of all talk of a “rule of law.”

Alas, we are currently a nation in manifest decline. Accordingly, “rule of law,” the cornerstone of our judicial system, must be radically reassessed. The concept, much like the justice system as a whole, has been contaminated, perhaps irrevocably, by bad-faith actors, for which the Constitution, understood in its proper, historical context, is totally foreign. Our historic Constitution ought to be understood as hopelessly forgotten by those now tasked to defend its sacred tenets. And so accounts for the present chaos.

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Booted from GoFundMe, Legal Defense Funds for Rancher Who Fatally Shot Illegal Immigrant Raise over $350,000 on GiveSendGo

Rachel Alexander

George Alan Kelly, a southern Arizona rancher, received over $350,000 in legal defense fund aid on GiveSendGo after being kicked off of GoFundMe for trying to raise money for his case.

Kelly is being charged with first-degree, premeditated murder for allegedly shooting an illegal immigrant on his property on January 30. GoFundMe took off multiple legal defense funds for Kelly because the company said these funds violated its terms of service about raising money “to cover the legal defense of anyone formally charged with an alleged violent crime.”

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County Clerk Prosecuted After Exposing Election Discrepancies in Colorado Tells Arizona Republicans Her Story

Rachel Alexander

Legislative District 10 Republicans and Michele Swinick of the Save My Freedom Movement put on an event Wednesday evening featuring the story of Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters, who says she believes she encountered programming discrepancies with the voting machines in her county in Colorado, and is now being prosecuted for election tampering.

The event included a screening of the documentary about her experience, “Selection Code,” and a Q & A session with both Peters and the documentary producers and directors, Matt and Joy Thayer. The title “Selection Code” refers to programming voting machines in order to choose certain candidates as winners.

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Arizona Attorney General Brnovich Announces Prosecutions After Reviewing Maricopa County Ballot Audit, as Kari Lake Calls to Decertify Election

Rachel Alexander
Mark Brnovich

The highly anticipated first report from Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s investigation into the results of the Maricopa County independent ballot audit are in, and includes criminal prosecutions. Addressed to Senate President Karen Fann (R-Prescott), who launched the independent audit, the letter referenced the work of his office’s Election Integrity Unit. Brnovich stated, “The EIU’s review has uncovered instances of election fraud by individuals who have been or will be prosecuted for various election crimes.” 

Leading gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who just called for the results of the 2020 presidential election in Arizona and Wisconsin to be reversed, told The Arizona Sun Times, “Today, Attorney General Brnovich confirmed what most of us have known since November 3rd, 2020: The election in Maricopa County was crooked and never should have been certified. This is not a Republican or Democrat issue. It’s an American issue. I look forward to seeing the prosecutions that the Attorney General has in store. It’s time for the perpetrators of this fraud to be held accountable for their actions.”

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Candidates for Maricopa County Attorney Scramble to Make the Ballot

Rachel Alexander

With Maricopa County Attorney Allister Adel resigning just three weeks before signatures are due for candidates running for that position, several attorneys have decided to run and are now racing around trying to collect 4,300 valid signatures by April 4. Since voters can only sign one candidate’s petition in the race, the candidates are quickly trying to distinguish themselves from the rest of the pack. 

Former Arizona legislator Thayer Verschoor, who is currently running for Maricopa County Supervisor, issued a list of questions to ask the candidates, which the Arizona Sun Times requested the candidates answer. Not one of the candidates bothered to respond with answers by the time this article was posted. 

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Commentary: More Trouble for the FBI in the Whitmer Kidnapping Case

Arizona Sun Times Staff
Gretchen Whitmer

The media went wild last week after Joe Biden’s Justice Department finally produced a criminal indictment to support the claim that January 6 was an “insurrection” planned by militiamen loyal to Donald Trump: Eleven members of the Oath Keepers, including its founder, Stewart Rhodes, face the rarely used charge of seditious conspiracy for their brief and nonviolent involvement at the Capitol protest that day.

Journalists luxuriated in the news, jeering those of us who had correctly noted that the Justice Department had failed to charge anyone with insurrection or sedition for more than a year.

But the press does not share the same zeal in covering another politically charged investigation: the imploding criminal case against five men accused of plotting to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020. The kidnapping narrative shares many similarities with their preferred telling of January 6, not the least of which is that alleged militias incited by Trump attempted to carry out a domestic terror attack.

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