By Howard Fischer
Mail | X: @azcapmedia

PHOENIX — An attorney who represented Mark Finchem in his ill-fated legal bid to overturn the 2022 race for secretary of state has agreed to retire — at least for now — as part of a deal to resolve a State Bar complaint against how he handled that case.

The order issued earlier this week suspended Daniel McCauley’s ability to practice law for 30 days.

It also requires the Cave Creek attorney, at the end of that period, to change his State Bar membership status to “retired” for at least one year.

But McCauley is not likely to be back in the courtroom again.

He told the State Bar is “has no plans to practice again.” And McCauley even told a judge in the case that got him into trouble in the first place his retirement was “impending.”

The punishment all relates to McCauley’s decision to represent Finchem despite official results showing the GOP contender lost the race for secretary of state to Democrat Adrian Fontes by more than 120,000 votes.

After hearing the arguments, Judge Melissa Julian, who handled that case, ordered Finchem to pay $40,565 in Fontes’ legal fees. And she imposed a separate $7,434 penalty against McCauley for filing a lawsuit she had called “groundless and not brought in good faith.”

That State Bar order says McCauley admitted “he lacked a sufficient factual or legal basis for several allegations advances in those proceedings, and further admits that some of his claims were false, inaccurate, frivolous, or based on speculation.”

McCauley did not respond to a request for comment. Finchem, however, had a lot to say about it.

“The real story here is, why is the Arizona Bar persecuting every single attorney that dared to represent an America First candidate in a contest?” he told Capitol Media Services. “Welcome to the banana republic.”

Finchem, who used to be a state representative from Oro Valley but is now running for the state Senate from Prescott, also said “the Bar cartel takes glee at persecuting lawyers for doing their ethical duty to give all ‘equal protection under the laws.’” He also claimed that “every single attorney who dared to represent a Republican has been persecuted by the radical left Bar.”

It is true that complaints have been filed against several lawyers who have represented other GOP candidates like failed gubernatorial hopeful Kari Lake and Abe Hamadeh. But Finchem brushed aside a list of other attorneys who have — and continue — to represent Republican interests.

In challenging Finchem’s loss in 2022, the case that led to the discipline, McCauley alleged a series of issues he said affected the outcome of the race. That included the malfunctioning of ballot tabulators in Maricopa County on election day, which he said created delays for voters and resulted in concerns that some ballot may not have been counted.

But the problem with that, Julian said, is Finchem and McCauley “offered no tether between the machine malfunctions and the outcome of the election.”

She also noted there was an affidavit from someone advanced by Finchem as an expert who identified 80,000 potentially “missing votes.”

“Yet, Finchem lost the election he challenged by 120,208 votes,” the judge noted. “The margin was so significant that even if it were assumed that 80,000 votes were missing that those votes would all have been cast in his favor, the result of the election would not have changed.”

Julian also said Finchem withdrew his request to inspect ballots, suggesting he had no expectation that it would yield a favorable outcome.

“This demonstrates that Finchem challenged his election loss despite knowing that his claims regarding misconduct and procedural irregularities were insufficient under the law to sustain the contest,” she wrote.

There also was the fact that McCauley admitted in court he decided to file the case after “a number of experience litigators” declined to pursue it. Put another way, Julian said, McCaulty conceded “a more experience litigator with a larger staff was needed to prosecute the action completely.”

“That should have been a deterrent,” the judge wrote. “At a minimum, concerns raised by other attorneys should have prompted further investigation into the contest’s validity.”

And there’s something else that got the attention of the judge. She said McCauley made comments during oral arguments that he “expressed being less at risk of being disbarred as a result of the filing given his impending retirement.”

“This, too, supports sanctions as it demonstrates a conscious decision to pursue the matter despite appreciating that the contest had no legal merit,” Julian said.

As part of the deal, McCauley was ordered to pay $1,200 to the State Bar to cover its costs and expenses its investigation.