On Friday, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich blamed the Arizona Board of Regents and the Secretary of State’s Office for being put in a position in which he was forced to reach an agreement with the State Bar of Arizona to resolve two bar complaints.
The Secretary of State (SOS) and Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) filed the complaints against Brnovich and several Office attorneys. The agreement will result in the dismissal of each complaint with no sanction or findings of professional misconduct.
Secretary of State Katie Hobbs said in a tweet that she was “grateful to the State Bar for handling this matter professionally, and hope that AG Brnovich adheres to the ethical rules moving forward. The people of Arizona deserve nothing less.”
While many Capitol insiders believed the Secretary of State’s Office may have had a politically motivated but legitimate issue with the Attorney General, they saw ABOR’s attack as a continuation of power struggle with the Attorney General’s Office.
The Attorney General says he is now going to pursue a rule change proceeding before the Arizona Supreme Court in order to get “clarity in the Rules of Professional Conduct as they apply to all government lawyers, including the Attorney General who is a constitutional officer as well as a lawyer, with additional duties that are prescribed by law.”
Brnovich called the settlement a “victory for the rule of law.” He described the settlement as “a rebuke for anyone attempting to weaponize the system for regulating lawyers for their own political purposes.”
The Attorney General called the complaints “unprecedented.” He accused the SOS and ABOR of using “the State Bar to try to silence the Attorney General and to advance their own political agendas.”