Arizona’s three most powerful government officials have in recent years turned to a nonprofit elections group for free work, giving access and influence to an outside organization that has targeted former aides to Donald Trump and tracks people who deny election results.
States United Democracy Center’s ties to the top tiers of Arizona government include writing an extensive memorandum for Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes in 2023. That legal digest describes a “false electors scheme” in 2020 and is now under fire from conservatives.
Lawyers for people being prosecuted by Mayes over their involvement say the memo outlining evidence and potential criminal charges against their clients shows the prosecutor’s political bent.
According to Mayes and the leader of States United, the document merely compiled a massive amount of publicly available information and served as a prelude to the attorney general’s investigation. The investigation led to the April indictment of 18 people on felony charges alleging a conspiracy to subvert Democrat Joe Biden’s victory by sending a slate of false electors to Congress.
Read the memo:https://legacy.www.documentcloud.org/documents/25475672-states-united-memo
Attorney Dennis Wilenchik, who represents Jim Lamon, the former U.S. Senate candidate who is being prosecuted, said States United is nothing more than “an anti-Trump political activist organization.”
“The State’s collaboration with and reliance on States United, in any capacity, is further proof of the Attorney General’s improper motivation in bringing this prosecution,” Wilenchik said. “Just look up who is behind it — people like Norm Eisen, who counseled then Chair Jerry Nadler in the impeachment proceeding against Donald Trump. Need I say more?”
Mayes and other elected officers in Arizona have turned to States United amid an environment of intense distrust, lies and conspiracies around elections. Arizona’s three Democratic statewide officeholders have used States United for training, support or legal representation.
States United does the work for free, in a rare arrangement for an outside group offering services to Arizona government officials.
States United President and Chief Executive Officer Joanna Lydgate disputed any partisan motivation in that work, noting the organization assists leaders of both major political parties and is led by a bipartisan advisory board.
“Is there one party that is sort of disproportionately participating in this kind of anti-democracy rhetoric and conduct? Yes,” she said. “But is it purely partisan, is it political? No. And should free and fair elections be a political issue? Absolutely not.”
The nonprofit has made Arizona a priority.
“We do focus on the states where the need is the greatest, and we assess that based on the places where elections are most closely contested, the places where there’s the most litigation and the states are most under-resourced to meet that need,” Lydgate said. “We also think a lot about, again, this atmosphere of political violence and where are the places where we think there might be the greatest level of threat.
“And Arizona kind of checks all of those boxes.”
What is States United?
States United Democracy Center started months before the 2020 election.
Trump, who was at that time the president and seeking a consecutive term, was casting doubt on the reliability of the vote. After his loss to Biden in 2020, Trump’s allies filed dozens of unsuccessful lawsuits across the nation. Trump was impeached, and acquitted, after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Lydgate, a former Massachusetts deputy attorney general, saw a gap between under-resourced state officials and a “pretty unprecedented set of challenges: litigation, disinformation, threats and the like.” States United hopes to back up those officials.
Lydgate joined forces with former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman and Eisen, the former Obama administration official Wilenchik cited when highlighting what he perceived as partisanship.
Eisen was special counsel and special assistant for ethics and government reform to former President Barack Obama, a Democrat. He is a Trump critic who worked for the House committee that helped investigate what became Trump’s first impeachment in 2019. Whitman was the Republican governor of New Jersey in the 1990s, but helped create a new political party several years ago.
States United evolved from the Voter Protection Program, an initiative of the Progressive State Leaders Committee, which supports progressive attorney general policies across the nation.
The nonprofit’s goals are to protect free and fair elections, keep officials and the public safe in election season, combat misinformation and hold accountable people who step “outside the bounds of our democracy.”
It is governed by a bipartisan advisory board that includes former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat. The late Grant Woods, a Republican Arizona attorney general who broke with his party to support Democrats and called Trump “the least qualified ever,” was a founding member of the board.
An affiliate called States United Action can do advocacy work under federal tax code. The affiliate labels and tracks so-called “election deniers” across the nation and monitors proposed laws that could interfere with elections.
States United has also filed ethics complaints against former Trump aides, including John Eastman and Jenna Ellis, who were charged in Mayes’ case.
“If we don’t have consequences for people who step outside the bounds, who abuse their law licenses, who violate the law and who violate the norms of American democracy, then I think we don’t have any hope for preserving it,” Lydgate said.
States United’s reach with Arizona’s top politicos
The group’s influence reaches high within Arizona government.
When she was secretary of state in 2021, Democrat Katie Hobbs brought in States United for legal counsel. It was “the only option,” Hobbs’ spokesperson said.
Hobbs and the Republican attorney general at the time, Mark Brnovich, were sparring over which of their offices could defend state election laws in court. Arizona Senate Republicans’ review of ballots cast in 2020 — a widely discredited exercise that confirmed Biden’s victory — was ongoing. Hobbs and other election officials were receiving threats, which prompted an exodus of election workers.
In what many Democrats viewed as retaliation, the Republican-majority Arizona Legislature barred Hobbs from spending taxpayer dollars to hire lawyers to represent her.
So States United represented Hobbs for free, as is its typical arrangement when working for government officials.
The group defended Hobbs in a challenge over the state’s 2019 elections procedures manual. When Hobbs was named in cases seeking to overturn election results in 2022 because of her role as the state’s election chief, States United defended the results. That included a case that affirmed Mayes’ 2022 victory.
Then-Secretary Hobbs’ elections director and counsel, Bo Dul, left to work for States United for about a year. After Arizonans elected Hobbs governor, Dul returned to be Hobbs’ top attorney.
Shortly after joining the Hobbs administration, Dul signed a retainer agreement with States United that would continue the group’s influence in Arizona. The exact scope of their work was redacted from documents provided by the Governor’s Office. Asked about Dul approving work and access for her former employer, Hobbs’ spokesperson Christian Slater said there was nothing improper and no taxpayer money was spent.
“States United provided research and administrative support on limited issues at the direction of the office’s counsel, all of which is further analyzed and vetted by our legal team, some of which is relied upon and some of which is not,” Slater said.
States United played an administrative role in an elections task force Hobbs convened in early 2023, according to Lydgate.
The group helped Secretary of State Adrian Fontes’ administration provide three training sessions for law enforcement officers around the state before the 2024 election but does not have a contractual agreement to do so, according to a spokesperson for Fontes. Hobbs, Mayes and Fontes were all elected to their current positions in 2022.
The nonprofit has convened regular phone calls for election officials to keep them apprised of misinformation. Those calls sometimes drew a staffer from former Republican Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer’s office, according to a spokesperson.
In November, States United argued against releasing the names of voters impacted by a computer glitch within the state Motor Vehicle Division. The group worked on behalf of former Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone and former Tucson Police Chief Roberto Villaseñor, arguing releasing the names would lead to threats, intimidation and harassment.
A research memo for Mayes outlines potential crimes
In 2023, States United added Mayes to its list of clients. Trump had already announced his third campaign, which he won, and will be sworn in as president later this month.
Mayes’ spokesperson, Richie Taylor, said States United primarily helps with election integrity and election protection, and shared “legal research on the 2020 fake electors scheme before the Attorney General’s Office undertook our own independent investigation.”
The office has tried to shield the identities of States United attorneys working in Arizona, redacting their names from a copy of its retainer agreement with the nonprofit. The agreement signed by Mayes’ Chief Deputy Dan Barr allows States United to “provide strictly legal services,” the terms say. Arizona Public Records Law says such records should be available for public review, and allows limited circumstances when information can be withheld.
Asked to cite the portion of public records law that allows for redaction of the names, Taylor said they were “made for privacy and because disclosure is not in the best interest of the State.” The names were “irrelevant and they have had no connection to the fake electors case whatsoever,” Taylor said.
But States United’s research on the electors scheme was compiled in a memo that Mayes’ office gave to defense lawyers as part of the normal process for sharing evidence.
Prosecutors apparently did so inadvertently. They then sent a letter trying to claw it back saying it was protected by attorney-client privilege. The Nov. 19 letter and memo were obtained by The Arizona Republic.
According to States United, the July 2023 memo was only shared with Arizona, though other states were also investigating or prosecuting slates of false electors.
It outlines election procedures and cites media reports and the Jan. 6 congressional committee’s investigation recounting the origin of the false elector scheme. It describes potential criminal charges, suggesting six crimes took place, and explains the legal threshold needed for each to win a conviction. An Arizona grand jury ultimately charged the defendants with three of those offenses and a fourth that was not suggested by States United.
The memo forecasts potential defenses to the charges and concludes with a paragraph about the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
“Indeed, for the first time in American history, the peaceful transfer of power was disrupted,” it reads. “Investigation and, if factually and legally supported, prosecution are critical steps to ensuring that those who violated the criminal laws are held accountable and that others are deterred from carrying out similar violations in the future.”
Who pays for States United’s work?
States United’s approximately 65 staffers are paid through donations to the nonprofit, which reported about $17 million in revenue in 2023, according to its most recent publicly available tax returns.
The group does not disclose its funders, but some can be identified through tax returns filed by the donors and posted online by the news organization ProPublica.
Major donors since 2022 include the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, which gave $2.5 million, and the philanthropic group of a founder of technology company HP, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, at $1 million.
The Hopewell Fund reported a $1.65 million payment in 2022, which States United said came as it was getting its nonprofit designation from the Internal Revenue Service. The Hopewell Fund works with the liberal dark-money engine Arabella Advisors to launch “innovative social change projects,” according to its tax returns.
Mayes’ and Hobbs’ spokespeople said that because States United’s work is done for free, state contract law does not apply. Arizona’s procurement code requires contracts be competitively bid for “every expenditure of public monies.”
Working for free is an unusual way to do the government’s business, but it’s not unheard of.
Former Arizona Attorneys General Tom Horne and Brnovich, both Republicans, turned to the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom for free legal representation, according to records provided by Mayes’ office. Those agreements were narrower and allowed outside work in four specific cases.
Is States United nonpartisan?
Wilenchik said the memo drafted by States United was further evidence of Mayes’ political motivation. He and other lawyers representing defendants had already argued the case should be dismissed under an Arizona law meant to prevent retaliatory lawsuits, but a judge has not yet ruled on that issue.
Mayes’ spokesperson, Taylor, pushed back, saying the case has “always been about upholding the rule of law and nothing else.” Taylor noted it was a grand jury that determined the individuals should face charges.
Michael Columbo, an attorney at the Trump-aligned Dhillon Law Group and who represents state Sen. Jake Hoffman, a Queen Creek Republican who is facing charges, said in a statement the attorney general “outsourced the prosecution strategy to States United, an out-of-state anti-Republican nonprofit.”
“It is not clear what is more outrageous about this: That the Attorney General’s Office needed help analyzing Arizona law or that for the most politically and constitutionally sensitive case they adopted the faulty instructions of a rabidly partisan advocacy group,” he said.
Taylor said the States United research “did not have a significant or impactful role on the state’s investigation.” But Wilenchik noted it was attached to four search warrant affidavits filed by Mayes’ deputies, a measure of its weight. One of those affidavits sought emails from Wilenchik’s son, Jack, an attorney who represented the state GOP in a post-election lawsuit. Jack Wilenchik was never charged but was a co-conspirator in Mayes’ case.
Dennis Wilenchik said it was “completely over the top and ridiculous” that his son was referenced in the indictment, and doing so was “just more of the political intimidation of lawyers that the left wing has tried to use to prevent the lawful exercise of constitutional rights.” He said his son’s role was irrelevant to his defense of Lamon.
States United downplayed its role and rejected claims it is partisan, noting it works for Democratic and Republican officials. Lydgate declined to go into detail, saying those relationships were protected by attorney-client privilege, but cited Pennsylvania. Republicans in the swing state also formed a slate of alternate electors in 2020, and Pennsylvania’s top election official is a Republican.
“Everything we do across every state we work in is at the request of or in service of the state officials that we’re working with,” Lydgate said. “We are not coming into any state to dictate policy priorities, litigation, accountability, action, anything like that.”
From the azcentral article here