News and analysis of the 2024 elections tend to focus on polls, which currently bode well for President Donald Trump. But that optimistic talk glosses over the continuing issues of election illegalities that helped torpedo Trump in 2020, and that still loom. The lawfare that helped defeat him three years ago is still there, grinding away, obvious in everything from Trump’s four criminal indictments to attacks on his business license in New York.
Nowhere is the continuing threat of anti-MAGA lawfare clearer than in Arizona. The Grand Canyon State has become, along with Georgia, the quintessential swing state. Whoever wins it will almost certainly be the next president. Yet Arizona also has become a leader in the vicious leftist lawfare that kneecapped MAGA political campaigns in 2020 and 2022. Until patriots can defeat the lawfare that has helped turn Arizona purple, if not a lasting blue, prospects for 2024 are not nearly as positive as Trump backers would like. If the left’s cheating in elections is enabled by the courts again, we know exactly what the results in 2024 will be.
The left has exploited its dominance over the legal system in Arizona to take hardball to the next level. Because they have successfully targeted the law licenses of conservative lawyers, it is nearly impossible for MAGA candidates in the state to find counsel to challenge election illegalities.
At the instigation of Democrats and The 65 Project, a leftist organization that files bar complaints against conservative and Republican election lawyers, the notoriously leftist State Bar of Arizona has gone after these valiant patriotic attorneys. The Arizona bar answers to the state judiciary and controls attorneys’ law licenses. It is a hardcore leftist stronghold. Much of the leadership of the Arizona bar is made up of attorneys from among the largest law firms in the state, which are often known for their representation of Democratic organizations and causes.
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Not content with targeting the attorneys involved with the “65” election lawsuits from 2020, the left is going after those who dared to get involved with 2022 lawsuits. The Arizona bar recently announced it is bringing charges against Kari Lake’s outspoken election attorney, Bryan Blehm. He expects they will disbar him. Blehm said, “The lawfare being waged against conservative attorneys, especially those involved in election-related law, will soon drain the bar associations of anyone willing to raise election challenges on behalf of conservative candidates.” Lake called Blehm and another similarly targeted election attorney of hers, Kurt Olsen, “heroes.” She says she may end up forced to represent herself in 2024.
The left’s efforts to intimidate and ultimately eliminate politically active conservative attorneys from Arizona began more than a decade ago. At that time, they realized they could exploit their control over the Arizona bar to target conservative Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas. In a prior article, I called Thomas “the man who stopped illegal immigration” for keeping his campaign promise to end illegal immigration in the state more than a decade before Trump’s election as President. In response to Thomas’ conservative politics and anti-corruption efforts in Maricopa County, the Arizona bar disbarred Thomas in 2012 (I was one of his deputies and was also targeted).
Thomas’ shocking disbarment trial, denounced even by left-leaning local columnists, awakened the state’s conservative grassroots and the state legislature. Lawmakers tried to pass legislation (which the Fake News nicknamed the “Andrew Thomas Revenge Bill”) to dismantle the Arizona bar effectively. By the time the legislation finally was passed in 2023, there was a Democratic governor in office, Katie Hobbs, so it was predictably vetoed.
Thomas recently offered the best analysis yet of Arizona’s descent into totalitarianism. Titled “Darkness Falls on Arizona,” Thomas’ Substack article noted how the left in Arizona has built “a totalitarian infrastructure backed by brutal lawfare that reveals itself, with each passing day, with growing brazenness.” That same leftist lawfare is on display in the persecution of Trump and the lawyers who dare fight for him, including conservative legal luminaries Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, who face imminent disbarment.
Thomas traces the new leftist totalitarianism to Marxist law professors, Democrat leaders in Arizona such as former Governor Janet Napolitano, and above all, RINO leaders who sold out the patriot cause. These RINOs are “the Pharisees of our time who profitably collaborated with the new totalitarianism.” They were best exemplified by the late Senator John McCain of Arizona. Thomas, who battled McCain for years, said about McCain:
“He showed the smart play was to smirk at the GOP grassroots enough to convince the Fake News he wasn’t part of the problem while amassing enough ruling-class campaign money and influence to smash his GOP opponents and die in office. The machine he left behind (properly denounced by Lake) consisted of numerous affiliated RINO politicians, lobbyists, and miscellaneous hangers-on in the shadows who’ve prospered in exchange for their fidelity. The grassroots didn’t realize they were being hoodwinked until right around the time McCain left the earth to meet at last a Judge he could not snooker. By then, the damage was done, and it appears irreparable.”
Recently, other leading national conservative publications besides Townhall, such as The Federalist, have taken notice of the deep rot in our legal system and state bars. However, Thomas noted that many conservative elites and attorneys still refuse to confront the problem, “Self-preservation still reigns supreme, as all seek to be the last devoured by the crocodiles.” He added dryly, “Good luck finding MAGA lawyers willing to fight in Arizona in the 2024 elections” (Besides his "Substack, Thomas’ YouTube Channel also tackles leftist lawfare).
Thomas said the left is driving conservative attorneys to extinction. In his response to the State Bar investigations, Blehm noted that recently, “our judiciary took a wrong turn, and that detour has lasting implications until it is publicly recognized.” His plea sums up the stakes for the 2024 elections. If the legal left can ensure, through intimidation, that Arizona goes for Biden regardless of the actual votes cast, we have already lost once again.
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