AG Kris Mayes Impeachment Calls: Know More Here

Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes is the target of a group of Arizona House Republicans who are demanding her impeachment on grounds that she “committed malfeasance,” abused her authority, and disregarded her responsibilities.

Amidst claims from Republicans that Mayes was arbitrarily choosing which laws to enforce, House Speaker Ben Toma established the House Committee on Executive Oversight in late March with the express purpose of examining the responsibilities and powers of the attorney general, looking into accusations against Mayes, and making recommendations to the House accordingly.

Mayes, like every other Democratic member of the committee, declined to attend its meetings, referring to the whole endeavour as a “sham”. The Democrats on the committee were chastised by Republicans for not showing up.

The panel’s Republican chair, Rep. Jacqueline Parker of San Tan Valley, suggested that the House consider a resolution to impeach Mayes for “malfeasance in office” in a letter to Toma dated May 28.

It’s uncertain if the House will do anything about Parker’s request. But there is very little possibility that Mayes would be removed from office, even if the chamber did prepare and pass articles of impeachment, which Republicans can accomplish with a simple majority. This is because Republicans only have a one-seat majority in the Senate, where a two-thirds supermajority is needed for a conviction.

“The people of Arizona deserve better from the state’s chief legal officer,” Parker said in a statement. “I hope all House members will thoroughly review the Committee’s report and findings and agree to impeach Attorney General Mayes and consider other measures outlined in our report to prevent future weaponization of the AG’s office.”

Within the report, Mayes was charged by the committee of:

• unjustifiably threatening the Mohave County Board of Supervisors with criminal and civil penalties if they voted a certain way 
• abusing the legal system to attack her political opponents when she launched a prosecution of GOP members of the Cochise County Board of Supervisors for their failure to certify the 2022 election on time
• abusing her power by issuing a consumer alert about emergency pregnancy centres they said were “filled with deception, fraud, and misrepresentations” 
• misusing public resources by hosting town hall meetings “to threaten public nuisance lawsuits against farmers and advocate for ballot measures relating to groundwater use”
• refusing to defend Arizona’s laws when they’re challenged in court, specifically Arizona’s Save Women’s Sports Act, which bars transgender student-athletes from playing on the sports team that matches their gender identity
• hindering the committee’s work by failing to produce records in a timely fashion and refusing to speak before the committee. 

Mayes spokesman Richie Taylor told the Arizona Mirror that the attorney general will not back down in the face of attacks from “radical Republicans” in the legislature. He will continue to fight the fentanyl crisis, prosecute elder abuse cases, shield Arizonans from consumer fraud, defend reproductive rights, and work to protect groundwater supplies.

“The investigative report released today by the sham House ad hoc oversight committee isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on,” Taylor said in an emailed statement. “This partisan stunt by far-right members of the Legislature makes a mockery of real legislative oversight. It is based on nothing more than political and policy disagreements that legislators like Rep. Jacqueline Parker have with Attorney General Mayes.”

The committee claimed that Mayes had been pestering the Mohave County Board of Supervisors because she had informed them in a letter from November that they were considering ordering a full hand count of ballots in an election, even though state law did not grant them that authority.

The heads of crisis pregnancy centers spoke to the committee for a large portion of its meeting on April 18. They took issue with Mayes’ consumer alert alerting Arizonans to the fact that emergency pregnancy centers are run by anti-abortion organizations and accused them of duping women into visiting their clinics only to put pressure on them not to get an abortion. The center leaders vehemently refuted this.

Even though no one who spoke during the meeting offered any proof of that, Parker and Republican Representative John Gillette of Kingman charged Mayes of conspiring with Planned Parenthood to get more women to their clinics for abortions in an attempt to increase their profits.

Parker’s accusations, Taylor told the Mirror at the time, were “ridiculous.”

“These comments from Rep. Parker are outrageous and absolutely unacceptable from a member of the Legislature,” Taylor wrote in an email. “There is zero truth to her assertions. 

The committee also heard testimony from parents of girls who play sports for their schools, who were upset that Mayes had declined to stand up for Arizona’s 2022 restriction on transgender kids participating on teams that correspond with their gender identity in court. Since the AG declared the law to be unlawful, she declined to defend it.

Two transgender athletes have filed a court challenge, which is preventing that law from being implemented at the moment.

The committee claimed that Mayes’ town hall meetings in rural Arizona were a waste of taxpayer funds, but they served as a safeguard for small-town residents and family farmers against large corporations such as a Saudi-Arabian company that was consuming a lot of water in Arizona to grow alfalfa for export to the Middle East.

She went on to say that she started the meetings in order to gather information for a potential public nuisance action against international corporations that, according to Mayes, are excessively extracting groundwater.

“It’s clear I’m the top threat to extremism in Arizona, and because of that, they want to remove me from office,” Mayes said in a campaign email sent May 29. “They’ve tried lawsuits, and they continue to lose. They try attacking me and the public sees right through it.

“Now, they want to ‘impeach’ me to remove me from office. The use of quotation marks is intentional, because this is a sham and a joke. It makes people doubt real investigations and it damages the reputation of the legislature.”