'I am proud of the work our office did': Ex-GOP AZ AG defends election fraud probe he allegedly buried

Faced with a new report that he covered up evidence against conspiracy theories the election was stolen, former Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich released a statement on Wednesday defending his office's actions around election investigations, reported ABC 15's Garrett Archer.

"I am proud of the work our office did with the election integrity unit that was created by the Arizona legislature," said Brnovich. "While subjected to severe criticism from all sides of the political spectrum during the course of our investigations, we did our due diligence to run all complaints to ground. Where we were able to debunk rumors and conspiracies, we did so. Nevertheless, we also identified areas we believe the legislature and county officials should address to ensure confidence in future elections."

This came shortly after Kris Mayes, the new Democratic AG of Arizona, released a trove of documents from her predecessor, revealing that Brnovich's office scuttled a report from investigators that delved into detail on why essentially every claim made about misconduct in the Arizona 2020 election was spurious.

Brnovich never broadly backed conspiracy theories about election fraud, and did take certain steps to push back on Trump allies' claims. He initially stated that there was "no evidence" for election fraud in the aftermath of the 2020 election. He also debunked claims dead people voted, and sharply disputed aspects of the controversial private "audit" of Maricopa County conducted by right-wing security firm Cyber Ninjas.

But he also appeared to give some credence to claims the election was in some way hard to trust while he was running for Senate in 2022 and courting Trump supporters, telling one right-wing radio host, "It's frustrating for all of us, because I think we all know what happened in 2020." He went on to lose that nomination to venture capitalist Blake Masters, who was defeated by incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly in the general election.

Arizona has been a hotbed of election denial activism ever since a series of statewide wins by Democrats; Kari Lake, the Trump-backed 2022 candidate for governor, never conceded her race to new Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, the previous Arizona Secretary of State, and is still trying to advance litigation to get the election thrown out.