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The Senate can use legislative privilege to shield some 'audit' records: Arizona Supreme Court
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"If the Arizona Senate provides more detailed explanations for why it says some records related to the partisan election review it conducted in 2021 are privileged and can’t be made public, those records should remain secret, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.
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In a long-running legal battle over records related to the so-called “audit” of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, the Senate has argued that roughly 1,000 records are entirely or partially covered by legislative privilege, meaning they aren’t subject to disclosure under Arizona’s public records law.
An appellate court ruled that, while some of the records were plainly covered by the privilege, it was unclear whether the privilege should apply to others. So the court ordered the Senate to give the records over to a trial judge so he could examine them in private and determine if they should be made public or remain hidden.
✓ But in doing so, the appellate court “overlooked a critical component” of the case law that guides when legislative privilege applies, the Supreme Court said. In addition to matters that deal directly with legislation — either existing or being considered — the privilege exemption also applies to “other matters placed within the jurisdiction of the legislature,” the justices ruled.
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“We hold that the Senate engaged in a privileged legislative act when it exercised its statutory and constitutional authority to investigate the 2020 general election,” Justice John Lopez wrote in the unanimous ruling.
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Even if there were no laws that were ever proposed as a result of the so-called “audit,” the privilege exists, Lopez wrote: “The legislative authority to investigate in contemplation of potential legislation concerning voter registration, election procedures, and election integrity, itself, is protected by legislative privilege.”
Further, the privilege isn’t wiped away if the entire “audit” was motivated solely by politics — critics have said the endeavor was aimed at bolstering Donald Trump’s lies about the election — as long as it was something the legislature had authority to do.
“We consider actions, not motives,” Lopez wrote. “Our analysis rests on the legislative nature of, rather than the motive for, the Senate’s Audit.”
That doesn’t mean all of the records are privileged, however. For instance, Lopez noted that legislative privilege doesn’t extend to “administrative or political” communications, including “payment, employment of consultants and the like.” Likewise, communications about “public reaction” to the election review or “what information should be released to the public” are political in nature and must be released.
Senate President Karen Fann praised the ruling.
✓✓ “This is a huge victory for the protection of the legislative process. This decision finally recognizes the broad application of legislative privilege and restores procedural sanity after the lower courts’ casual dismissal of the Senate’s claims of legislative privilege,” she said in a written statement. “We absolutely believe in transparency, however, there are times when legislative privilege should be exercised so that we can do the jobs that the people of Arizona elected us to carry out.”
American Oversight, the liberal government watchdog group that sought the records and sued the Senate for their release, said the ruling was “misguided.”
✓ “This ruling makes it easier for officials to hide the truth about their motives and conduct from the public,” said Heather Sawyer, American Oversight’s executive director.
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It remains to be seen how many of the 1,000 or so documents the Senate says should remain private will be covered by the privilege. The Supreme Court said the Senate’s earlier description of documents withheld were too vague and didn’t allow the court or American Oversight to truly assess whether the records were privileged.
✓✓ “Greater detail is required to mitigate the risk that the vague descriptions in privilege logs could defeat transparency in government activities as required by law,” Lopez wrote.
So the court ordered the Senate to “include specific assertions explaining why the document is purportedly privileged.” If the Senate does so and the descriptions “adequately delineate legislative acts,” then the trial court judge cannot view the records in private to determine if they are privileged. If the Senate doesn’t update its privilege logs, or doesn’t meet the standard set by the Supreme Court, then the judge can examine the records privately."
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Blake Masters has hired two 'fake electors' as campaign staffers
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters has hired two fake electors, according to his campaign finance reports.
Gregory Safsten has been paid $29,350.80 so far by the Masters campaign as a “campaign consultant.” Safsten was one of 11 people who signed a bogus document claiming former President Donald Trump won Arizona’s Electoral College votes in the 2020 election.
The fraudulent elector document was organized by the Arizona Republican Party on behalf of Trump’s campaign, which encouraged similar efforts in other battleground states that Trump lost as part of a plan to let congressional Republicans reject Joe Biden’s win and install Trump for a second term. Safsten was the executive director for the
✓✓ Masters has also paid Mesa resident Lori Osiecki, who was one of a different group of 11 fake electors. She helped create a copy of the “certificate of ascertainment”
that each state submits to cast their electoral votes. Osiecki and the
others, who identified themselves as “The Sovereign Citizens of the
Great State of Arizona,” sent signed, notarized certificates to the
National Archives purporting to be electoral votes for Trump and they
also sent a copy to the Secretary of State’s Office. . .
Masters’ campaign has paid Osiecki $500 in “salary” and $250 for “mileage,” according to FEC filings. His campaign refused to comment on Safsten or Osiecki, instead attacking the Mirror and his opponent Sen. Mark Kelly.
“Must have missed about the story you wrote about how Mark Kelly appears in photos with child molesters (Navarette) and known anti-Semitic (Ilhan Omar),”
✓ Masters spokeswoman Katie Miller, who is married to former Trump advisor Stephen Miller, said in an email. She was referring to former Democratic state legislator Tony Navarrete, who was arrested in 2021 for molesting a teen boy over several years. He is awaiting trial on seven felonies.
In response to a follow-up question, Miller asked to speak off-the-record. When the Mirror said it was only willing to speak to her on-the-record, she lashed out.
“You’re phoning it in as a reporter instead of doing any actual work,” Miller said.
✓ Masters’ campaign also is connected to other known purveyors of former President Donald Trump’s Big Lie, despite his campaign’s recent shift away from such language, as reported by CNN.
✓ Former One America News host and Trump attorney Christina Bobb was paid more than $1,400 by the Masters campaign for “media consulting fees.”
Bobb was part of the legal team directly involved with the efforts to overturn the election results and made baseless claims on air during the “audit” effort about both the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 insurrection.
✓✓ During the Arizona “audit,” Bobb had special access to the proceedings, and she frequently used her time on OAN asking viewers to donate money to an organization she ran that paid to give lawmakers “tours” of the “audit” floor. The organization she still runs helped raise $605,000 for Cyber Ninjas to conduct the partisan election review.
✓ Masters has been attempting to soften his tone on abortion and election fraud, even going as far as removing a section from his website that claimed that the 2020 election was rigged against Trump.
“We need to get serious about election integrity. The 2020 election was a rotten mess — if we had had a free and fair election, President Trump would be sitting in the Oval Office today and America would be so much better off,” Masters’ website said on August 1, the day before the primary.
“We need to get serious about election integrity,” is all that remains of that statement now.
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COMMENTARY
Will Kari Lake enforce a ban on nearly all abortions? Voters deserve to know.
"As a physician, it’s important to me that I be as clear and honest as possible with my patients about their health, be it good news or bad news. Their health and well-being is at the forefront of my communication. I expect the same from our elected leaders. But now that Kari Lake will be the Republican nominee for governor of Arizona, I fear that her increasingly veiled stances against abortion could be not just misleading, but harmful and even deadly for Arizona women."
Dr. Laura Mercer is a native Arizonan and a practicing obstetrician-gynecologist in Phoenix. She is the chair of the Arizona Section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and a member of the Committee to Protect Health Care.
"Lake has made many statements on abortion in the past that have raised my concerns considerably as a doctor. Physicians, like the majority of Arizonans, regard abortion as lifesaving health care. Like other forms of health care, we believe decisions around abortion are private and personal, and should be made between women and their trusted doctors, without political interference.
We know that women from all walks of life make these decisions, because they’re our patients.
Yet Kari Lake has referred to abortion as “the ultimate sin.” Doctors find this label not just wrong, but dangerous. We took an oath to do no harm, and assigning this sort of stigma to standard health care is harmful, at best. We know our patients, we listen to them, and we trust them to make the right decisions for themselves and their health.
We also know that, sometimes, abortion saves women’s lives,
either in the immediate or longer term. Health issues aren’t black and
white. Complications that seem minor earlier on in a pregnancy can
escalate quickly, sometimes even within seconds. A condition that isn’t
acutely deadly, such as bleeding, one day could worsen dramatically,
causing unnecessary pain and suffering. Health conditions like high
blood pressure can turn into a disease called preeclampsia, which can
cause kidney failure, liver failure, seizures and even death. Doctors
should be able to use the full range of reproductive health care in
these instances not only to prevent death but also to avert severe
health conditions long before they become deadly. . .
There’s a reason politicians don’t work in clinics or hospitals — they don’t have the medical training needed to answer these questions, to respond to changing health circumstances and make the best call to save their patient from severe suffering or death.
Perhaps sensing that most people don’t agree with her past statements on abortion, Lake has seemingly tried to move away from sharing specifics — another practice that makes doctors uneasy as we try to navigate the changing landscape of abortion laws.
Lake said in May that, as governor, she would work to enact anti-abortion legislation, but didn’t give specifics. Her campaign claimed that she supports exceptions from banning abortion for rape and incest. Yet she simultaneously says she supports Arizona’s existing (and conflicting) abortion laws, which do not provide such exceptions for rape and incest. And shortly after becoming the GOP nominee for governor, Lake dodged a question from a reporter asking if she would advocate for more restrictive abortion laws.
Doctors overwhelmingly oppose more restrictions on — and government interference in — abortion care. But if Lake supports extreme bans on abortion, she should give it to Arizonans straight. She should be honest and clear, just as physicians try to be when delivering bad news to patients.
Just as patients deserve to know what their future holds, Arizonans deserve to know if their governor will enforce a ban on nearly all abortions."
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