In late March, Arizona State Representative Noel Campbell blasted the House Ethics Committee, chaired by Rep. John Allen, for its own lack of ethics and its treatment of Rep. David Cook. Members have been unhappy with Allen for his frequent interactions with the media and how freely he shares the details of the Committee’s work and his own personal opinions on the investigation. Several Republicans are complaining that it is like watching the Trump Impeachment, with Allen playing the part of Democrat Adam Schiff.
It appears Cook himself has now given up on the process and is starting to make his own case directly to the members, and he is offering detailed accounts of how the process has lost its way and how the investigation has become a prosecution before facts have even been collected.
RELATED ARTICLE: Campbell Blasts House Ethics Committee For Cook “Prosecution”
The Kokanovich hiring stood out to longtime elections attorney Timothy LaSota who described him as a “hyper-partisan liberal” and referred the Arizona Yellow Sheet Report to an “op-ed he authored with other federal prosecutors criticizing Rachel Mitchell for her role in the confirmation of US Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh (LINK), and a letter he co-signed, again with other former prosecutors, saying Trump should be prosecuted over the Mueller report (LINK).” LaSota was “stunned” the GOP Chairman of the Ethics Committee would hire a far-left activist if the goal was to produce an investigation that would be credible in the eyes of the GOP majority. “He’s shown himself to be first and foremost an ultra-partisan Democrat.” said LaSota of Kokanovich.
Cook, a conservative rancher out of Gila County, sent off an email outlining his issues with the investigation that was triggered when he got sideways with Bas Aja, a powerful and longtime lobbyist that is close to House Speaker Rusty Bowers. According to Aja’s daughter Anna Marie Knorr, Aja targeted Cook because he and his wife Diana supported her while her own family sought to isolate her and trap her in a broken marriage. The feud culminated in personal letters from Cook to Knorr being shopped to the media that portrayed their relationship as amorous, something both the Cooks and Knorr herself have denied. Ultimately, two complaints were filed with the House Ethics Committee, which jump started the investigation.
For his part, Representative Allen was hand-picked by Speaker Bowers when the normal Chairman TJ Shope recused himself because he was Cook’s seatmate in LD Eight. Allen then hired liberal attorney Mark Kokanovich to lead the investigation, which raised eyebrows given how high-profile Kokanovich’s attacks on Republicans have been.
Which brings us to Cook’s lengthy email detailing the 1,000+ pages of documents he turned over to the Committee before it accused him of not cooperating and subpoenaed many of the exact same documents. According to Cook, most of what has been subpoenaed are the documents he already turned over or documents on his work computer, like his emails and calendar, that the House Investigators already have access to. Cook believes much of what the investigators are doing are either for show, to make him look bad, or for dough, as the large legal firm doing the work racks up bills for the taxpayers to pay.
Cook did expose some details that would make civil libertarians cringe, like how broad some of the document requests were. For instance, investigators wanted every piece of communication he had between him and any employee of Pinal County, no matter who it was and no matter if it was relevant to the investigation. Given that much of Cook’s district is in Pinal County, it is a very broad request. Another broad request described by Cook was “any and all documentation regarding any legislation I have been involved with” which would be extremely broad under normal conditions. But Allen and Kokanovich wanted all of these Pinal County communications and the legislative documentation going back to the day Cook was first sworn into the Legislature – a date long before anything mentioned in the complaints themselves.
Cook is a Republican, so no one expects the ACLU to rush to his defense, but the lack of due process he writes about ought to alarm a great many of his fellow legislators. Time will tell which, if any, have the courage to make themselves heard to a committee chairman and the House Speaker who hand-picked him.
[metaslider id=65385]