Journalists’ Roundtable: 2-24-23

We were joined by Laurie Roberts of The Arizona Republic and Azcentral.com, Howie Fischer of Capitol Media Services, and Jeremy Duda of Axios Phoenix.

Top stories include:

• Increasing contentious relationship between Governor and State Legislature

What happened with investigation former Attorney General didn’t mention?

“This is former Attorney General, Mark Brnovich, during his last year in office, desperately trying to rise out of a crowded Republican primary. He had been involved in a year long investigation of all the election claims, and he came out in April with this report that insinuated that there were serious vulnerabilities, and that the 2020 election was sort of messed up,” said Roberts.

“What we didn’t know was that a month before his own investigators had given him a interim report, which they had found no evidence to back up any of it, but he went with it anyway,” said Roberts.

What was discussed during the joint Elections Committee hearings?

“Conspiracy theories, stuff that makes the cyber ninjas audit look credible, I didn’t watch and I don’t think most people did. I don’t know why you even would at this point, there’s no credibility to any of these allegations,” said Duda.

One of the claims included a woman accusing legislators, County supervisors, and judges of taking bribes from the Sinaloa cartel; however, they provided no evidence to back this claim.

A woman who works for a law firm also accused legislators, “Katie Hobbs by name, Mesa Mayor John Giles by name, three of the five county supervisors, and a whole host of other people. She accuses them of taking bribes, now if you don’t have evidence to back that up, that seems like a whole like defamation,” said Roberts.

“You are bringing discredit to the entire legislature, except among the people who thought that Hilary Clinton was selling babies out of a pizza place in Washington D.C.,” said Howie.