By Howard Fischer
Mail | X: @azcapmedia

PHOENIX - One of the defendants in the "fake electors'' case wants Kris Mayes disqualified from pursuing it, even if she gets a new or renewed indictment.

That's because the attorney for Christina Bobb claims there is a financial link between the attorney general and a group that prepared a report for her on how to bring the charges and prosecute the case - a link that the Attorney General's Office denies.

Thomas Jacobs contends that States United, through related organizations, indirectly provided $190,000 to a legal defense fund that Mayes had established to fight a court challenge by Republican Abe Hamadeh to her 2022 election.

 And Jacobs contends that was a payment to Mayes to convince her to indict his client, Bobb, and 17 others in connection with various charges related to what the Attorney General's Office says was a conspiracy to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election.

"The issue is whether she proceeded in good faith with this indictment, with this prosecution, or if she was essentially a puppet to a national agenda that assisted her in getting her elected by paying her attorneys' fees for a challenge,'' Jacobs told Capitol Media Services.

The problem with all that, according to Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Klingerman, is that the connections that Thomas is claiming just don't exist.

He does not dispute that the Democratic Attorney Generals Association gave Mayes $50,000 before the defendants in the case were indicted, and another $150,000 after the indictments were handed up. Nor does Klingerman address Jacobs' statement that DAGA shares an address, president and executive director as the Progressive State Leaders Committee.

But any connection, he said, stops there.

"States United has never been a part or program of Progressive State Leaders Committee or any of the other organizations,'' Klingerman told Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sam Myers who is handling the case.

 "And States United's formation as an independent legal entity occurred long before it entered into the May 2023 retainer agreement with the Attorney General's Office.''

Jacobs, however, said there's enough evidence to show a connection between Mayes and States United to raise questions about whether the attorney general is unbiased.

All this would normally be hashed out in front of Myers, with evidence and witnesses. But Jacobs has been so far unable to get his day in court to present his claim of apparent bias - and to ask to have Mayes disqualified.

By the time he asked Myers to disqualify Mayes, the judge already had tossed the indictment. Myers ruled that prosecutors did not provide all relevant information to the grand jurors.

That specifically includes failing to give them access to the federal Electoral Count Act of 1887, a statute that specifically addresses the possibility of competing electors from a state and how Congress must handle them.

And that goes to the heart of the defense: the claim by those indicted they were not trying to commit fraud but that they were preparing an "alternate slate'' of electors to send to Washington if it turned out that Trump outpolled Biden. And at the time, there was pending litigation over the election results.

Mayes has until Friday to decide whether to appeal Myers' decision to dismiss the indictment to the Arizona Supreme Court - or start over again by presenting the evidence to a new grand jury.

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