The State Bar of Arizona (SBA) is proceeding with two counts against Kari Lake’s attorney Bryan Blehm for referencing in a brief that 35,563 ballots were unaccounted for due to chain of custody problems at Maricopa County’s third-party early ballot processor, Runbeck Election Services, and for criticizing the Arizona judiciary. Representing himself, Blehm filed a 94-page Answer to the SBA’s charges on January 25.
In Count 1, the SBA accused Blehm of “misleading” the Arizona Supreme Court. The first half of the SBA’s case against Blehm consists of claiming that he lied when he stated in a pleading that both parties in Lake’s election challenge agreed that there was a discrepancy of 35,563 ballots unaccounted for due to chain of custody problems at Runbeck. Blehm asserted in the Lake brief, “The record indisputably reflects at least 35,563 Election Day early ballots, for which there is no record of delivery to Runbeck, were added at Runbeck….”
Blehm explained in his Answer to the SBA that he believed defendant Governor Katie Hobbs, who Lake sued over her loss in the gubernatorial race, was in agreement about the lack of a chain of custody for the 35,563 ballots, since Hobbs’ pleadings reflected two different numbers for the number of ballots that arrived at Runbeck versus the number that were allegedly then sent to Maricopa County for tabulation.
“Thus, Respondent and his co-counsel held that as an undisputed fact and did nothing more than present the mathematical computation based on the exhibits submitted by defendants in their response brief,” he said. “Counsel simply relied on the defense exhibits to provide a mathematical computation of at least 35,563 ballot affidavit envelopes that have no complete record of delivery to the vendor and no record or retrieval from drop boxes. Defendants did not refute the mathematical accuracy of that computation.”
After Blehm stated in his reply brief that both parties agreed upon this fact, Hobbs did not challenge the assertion. She did not request oral argument nor request to file a sur-reply in response to his reply brief.
Nor has Maricopa County disputed the accusation that they have no chain-of-custody records regarding the retrieval and/or delivery of 35,563 ballot affidavit envelopes.
Failing to document chain of custody for ballots is a class 2 misdemeanor.
In Count 2, the SBA referenced a post on X by local progressive attorney Tom Ryan, who aggressively goes after conservative attorneys on X. Ryan said in his August 12, 2023 post, “Sadly, this is confirmation that Kari Lake’s attorney has lost it. I am not a psychiatrist but I am pretty sure there is an appropriate medical diagnosis for this kind of paranoia and delusional belief. He needs help. Seriously.”
Ryan was referring to a post by Blehm discussing the Arizona Supreme Court’s creation of a “disinformation” task force which has caused much alarm. In his post, Blehm expressed concern that the government, including the task force, was taking steps to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president by preventing discussion of as well as attempts to stop election fraud.
He said, “You see, if the State Supreme Court and its enforcement arm, the state bar association, formed committees to control misinformation and the misinformation narrative of the day is election fraud, it tames attorneys willingness to bring election fraud claims on behalf of their clients.”
The Arizona Supreme Court formed the Task Force on Countering Disinformation in 2019, the first state court in the country to do so. Task force members include some partisans, and none of them appear to be conservative. The task force issued reports with recommendations such as: “Establish a national, centralized point of contact to assist in identifying disinformation and having it flagged or, if warranted, removed while respecting the expression of individual opinions and the exercise of First Amendment rights.”
The task force utilized resources on disinformation from the National Center for State Courts (NCSC). NCSC lists several types of disinformation, including four “even more dangerous political themes.” The first two involve elections. The first one is “[t]he justice system ignores voting irregularities and fraud allowing elections to be stolen from certain candidates.” The second is “[t]he justice system tips the electoral map in favor of a particular party.”
Blehm believes that Ryan likely initiated the bar complaint against him over his post, and expressed what he suspected was his motivation. “Mr. Ryan represents a former Maricopa County Election Department employee and is likely seeking documents related to the status of an investigation I am conducting on behalf of clients,” Blehm speculated. “As stated to the SBA, bar complaints are not a proper tool for discovery, and I refuse to breach my client’s confidentiality for purposes of my response.”
The SBA claimed that Blehm accused the Arizona judiciary of conspiring. Blehm responded, “That is a gross misrepresentation of the tweet, which states the folks doing the conspiring needed to control the media and judicial narrative. They gained this control by inducing state judiciaries to create disinformation task forces.”
Blehm explained how former CIA official Susan Spaulding “convinced Chief Justice Robert M. Brutinel to use his administrative or housekeeping powers to create a ‘Disinformation Task Force’ in 2019.” He went over Spaulding’s background “in the growth of the censorship state” as a key figure at the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (“CISA”), then extended that role to the judiciary after she moved to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (“CSIS”) “ to ‘strengthen the U.S. judicial system’ against Russian attacks and of course disinformation.”
The House Judiciary Committee was so concerned about Spaulding’s work that her name is mentioned 27 times in their report issued last June, “The Weaponization of CISA: How a ‘Cybersecurity’ Agency Colluded With Big Tech and ‘Disinformation’ Partners to Censor Americans.” The report discusses how Spaulding wanted not just foreign disinformation stopped, but also domestic. Additionally, “As … Spaulding …presaged, it was ‘only a matter of time before someone realizes we exist and starts asking about’ CISA’s repeated violations of the First Amendment.”
Blehm cited an opinion by U.S. Federal District Court Judge Terry A. Doughty in State of Missouri v. Joseph Biden, Jr., regarding a lawsuit filed against the federal government for colluding with social media companies to suppress free speech. Doughty issued an injunction stopping the practice.
“If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history,” Doughty said in the 2022 case. “In their attempts to suppress alleged disinformation, the Federal Government, and particularly the Defendants named here, are alleged to have blatantly ignored the First Amendment’s right to free speech.”
Blehm discussed Spaulding’s background in a video he posted on X last month.
Blehm went over the CIA’s involvement “in determining what speech constituted ‘disinformation.’” He said the “Joe Biden Campaign Manager, Anthony Blinken, was involved with coordinating efforts of the CIA to dispel the Hunter Biden Laptop story as ‘Russian disinformation.’” Blehm observed, “Curiously enough, the rationale for creating the Disinformation Task Force as stated by Chief Justice Brutinel was to prevent ‘Russian disinformation’ from influencing Arizona courts.”
Blehm listed his defenses at the end of the Answer, which include the right to free speech, “unclean hands” by the SBA since it participated in the task force, and his oath of office to uphold the Constitution.
The specific ethics rules Blehm is alleged to have broken are here. Blehm believes the SBA intends to disbar him. The SBA has increasingly come under criticism for targeting conservative attorneys. It is also going after two of Lake’s other attorneys. A status conference was held on February 1. A final telephonic final hearing management conference is scheduled for May 13. His trial is set for May 20 and 21.
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter / X. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “State Bar of Arizona Meeting” by Arizona State Bar Association.
