Mark Brnovich vows to fight election tampering ... but only if you elect him to the Senate

Attorney General Mark Brnovich is pledging to stand for “election integrity” if only you will put him into the Senate next year.

“As Senator, I will fight to make sure your vote counts and is never at risk of being altered or tampered with,” he said, in a campaign tweet on Friday.

Pity he won’t take up the fight as the state’s attorney general.

'We need you to stop the counting,' Ward said

It’s been a week now since evidence came to light suggesting that Trump and his allies mounted a pressure campaign on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, trying to get county officials to tamper with the county’s election results.

On July 2, The Arizona Republic’s Yvonne Wingett Sanchez laid out voicemails and text messages documenting a behind-the scenes effort by Donald Trump, his attorney Rudy Giuliani and state GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward to stop Joe Biden from being declared the winner of Arizona.

“We need you to stop the counting,” she wrote to then-Supervisor Chairman Clint Hickman on Nov 7, as the votes were being tallied.

“You have all the power you need to make it happen,” she wrote on Nov. 13, while lobbying him to chase a baseless conspiracy theory that Dominion was fixing the vote.

And by that evening, after a ballot update showed Biden had won the county: “POTUS will probably be calling you.” 

Ward’s entreaties became more pointed in the days that followed. By Nov. 20 – the day the supervisors were scheduled to certify Biden’s over Trump – she was asking Hickman and Supervisor Steve Chucri to delay the certification vote.

“Why not wait for 11/23,” she asked. “Seems you’re playing for the wrong team and people will remember. *WRONG team.” 

Shortly before the supervisors certified Biden’s win, Ward made one last try.

“Sounds like your fellow Repubs are throwing in the towel,” she wrote to Supervisor Bill Gates. “Very sad. And unAmerican.”

What kind of 'fixed up' was Giuliani talking about?

Giuliani, meanwhile, was calling all four Republican supervisors, claiming that it was at the president’s request and that he had information Trump wanted to pass along.

“I’d like to see if there’s a way that we can resolve this so that it comes out well for everyone,” Giuliani said, in a Dec. 24 voicemail to Supervisor Jack Sellers, presumably referring to the state-county dispute over Senate supboenas of the election results and machinery. "We’re all Republicans, I think we have the same goal ... . Let’s see if we can get this done outside of the court, gosh.” 

Gates, too, got a call.

“Maybe we can get this thing fixed up,” Giuliani said, in a voicemail. “You know, I really think it’s a shame that Republicans sort of are both in this kind of situation. And I think there may be a nice way to resolve this for everybody.”

Speaking of getting this thing fixed up, Trump tried to call Hickman on New Year’s Eve and again at 9:22 p.m. (Arizona time) on Jan. 3, one day after he pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to change the results of that state’s election.

To his credit, Hickman didn’t take the calls, likely saving Trump from himself in any criminal investigation.

Election tampering, after all, is a felony. 

Specifically, “a person who at any election knowingly interferes in any manner with an officer of such election in the discharge of the officer’s duty, or who induces an officer of an election or officer whose duty it is to ascertain, announce or declare the result of such election, to violate or refuse to comply with the officer’s duty or any law regulating the election, is guilty of a class 5 felony.”

That’s not me talking. That’s ARS 16-1004.

Meanwhile, Arizona's AG ain't touching it

It shouldn’t have taken five minutes for Arizona’s attorney general to announce an investigation.

But that is a path fraught with political peril for a Republican attorney general desperate to appeal to Republicans in run for the Senate – one who already has drawn the wrath of Trump for his “lackluster” defense of the Arizona Senate’s election audit.

And so, seven days later, not a peep has been heard from Brnovich.

In fact, not a peep has been heard from anyone in the Republican Party.

Except for Ward, who actually had the chutzpah this week to suggest that it is Maricopa County’s elections officials who belong in jail.

To say what happened here is outrageous is obvious:

The tampering. 

And the crickets from Arizona’s attorney general.

More:Brnovich will pay if he investigates Trump allies. He should anyway

Oh, there was this: 

“As Senator, I will fight to make sure your vote counts and is never at risk of being altered or tampered with.”

Just not, apparently, until then.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

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