Arizona's Politics TIDBITS (Utilities Edition): APS Finding "LOTS" Of Challengeable Clean Energy Signatures

There is a lot of political news in which mega-utility Arizona Public Service and major Pinal County provider Johnson Utilities are at the vortex. Here are updates:

7/6, 3:45pm: The jury is expected to begin deliberations on Monday morning in the alleged bribery trial involving former Arizona Corporation Commissioner Gary Pierce and three others. After 17 days of trial testimony, jurors were given the 4th of July week off and told to report back on the 9th to determine the fates of Pierce and his wife Sherry, Johnson Utilities owner George Johnson, and lobbyist Jim Norton.

7/6, 3:40pm: 

Top staffer at @CorpCommAZ effectively forced out as regulators suddenly realize that wife @A_Dorff works for @VeridusAZ which is helping APS to kill renewable energy initiative. https://t.co/AFnaInK4L6 pic.twitter.com/yjEw9kyT8G

— Howard Fischer (@azcapmedia) July 6, 2018

7/6, 3:15pm: The Arizona Corporation Commission and all of its Commissioners except one this week filed a Motion to Dismiss the most-recent version of the 5th Commissioner's lawsuit to force APS to disclose all of its political contributions in the 2014 election cycle.  Robert Burns will be responding to the Motions to Dismiss from his fellow Commissioners and a separate one from APS. (The ACC Motion was filed on July 2 and APS' on June 25.)

As noted below, Arizona's Politics reported extensively in 2014 on APS's contributions to both dark money organizations and semi-dark organizations, and its efforts to elect Doug Ducey as Governor, Mark Brnovich as Attorney General and favorable Corporation Commissioners.

7/6, 2:45pm: As expected, Arizona Public Service is going over each of the 480,464 petition signatures - on 50,065 different petition sheets - submitted yesterday by the Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona initiative group. And, Matt Benson, the spokesperson for the APS-funded opposition group Arizonans For Affordable Electricity, is claiming that there are "LOTS" of examples of invalid signatures and ineligible petition circulators.

Here are the two examples cited thus far:

Getting our 1st look @ an initial batch of the @CleanHealthyAZ signature petitions and ... wow, just wow.

These. Are. A. Mess.

A teaser: Guess who turned in signature petitions? The same Russian spy we already told the campaign about.

LOTS more to come. Watch this space. pic.twitter.com/JRYlfnd4e7

— Matthew Benson (@MatthewWBenson) July 6, 2018

Lonetree was indeed convicted of being a spy; however, it is not clear whether or not he had his civil rights restored following his prison term. If he has such proof, he would be a valid circulator. Also, it is highly likely that the highly-capable attorneys for Clean Energy would try to retain the signers on Lonetree's petitions by bringing those people in to testify.

Attorneys for AAE have filed an unresolved complaint with the Attorney General's Office* that Clean Energy has registered more than 30 possibly ineligible felons as circulators. And, AAE attempted to use that partial information to warn people not to sign the initiative petition.

More adventures in fraudulent signature gathering by @CleanHealthyAZ . I'm no expert, @roddmcleod - do these look legit to you?
I wonder if @TomSteyer knows his millions paid for this hot garbage in AZ.#SleazySignaturesAZ pic.twitter.com/O5XUubiCRZ

— Matthew Benson (@MatthewWBenson) July 6, 2018

As Benson points out, committees are expected to "scrub" signatures that they should know are not valid. AAE is very likely to file legal action in Maricopa County Superior Court in the next two weeks to attempt to prevent the initiative from being placed on the November ballot.

*As reported earlier by Arizona's Politics, Attorney General Mark Brnovich is the future beneficiary of a $50,000 APS contribution to the Republican Attorneys General Association. APS gave RAGA $425,000 in 2014 to support Brnovich's election.

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READ: The "Less Redacted" Application & Affidavit For the Search Warrant Of Paul Manafort's Storage Unit

U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson is giving attorneys for Special Counsel Robert Mueller and former Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort until Monday to explain why a "less redacted" copy of the search warrant - and the Application and Affidavit for that warrant - for Manafort's storage locker should not be part of the record in the main case.

Last week, the cleaner versions were made publicly available in the (closed) action regarding the search warrants in the District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia.

Here is the Application and Affidavit, spelling out much of the background for the Special Counsel's case against Manafort. The trial is scheduled for later this month.

   Manafort Storage Unit Search Warrant Applic and Affid by arizonaspolitics on Scribd

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McSally Only AZ GOP Rep. Voting For Failed Immigration Bill

(UPDATE, 2:05pm: Rep. McSally released a statement within the last hour: “I believe the legislation I have been working on since September of last year, the Securing America’s Future Act, took a stronger approach to addressing these problems, but I do not believe making the perfect the enemy of the good does anything to make our country safer either. However, like President Trump, I supported this bill because it represents a tangible solution for these important issues. I stand ready and look forward to continuing to work with the President to find a way to get the mission done.” Full news release.)

Four of Arizona's five Arizona Republicans in the U.S. House voted to kill today's immigration bill, hours after it received an endorsement from President Trump. The lone holdout was Rep. Martha McSally (R-CD2), who had been involved in pushing the more hard-line bill that was defeated last week.

Today's vote was 121-301, and all of the Democrats voted against the Republican compromise. 112 Republican members did not support it, either.

McSally has not made any public comments today about the bill. Earlier today, President Trump tweeted his endorsement, calling it "STRONG BUT FAIR". However, that nearly half of the GOP House Members could not go along with it may undercut the President's frequent argument that "open border" (and pro-crime) Democrats are responsible for the immigration stalemate.


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LISTEN: New APS RoboCall - We're Still Hearing Media Reports Of Scary Circulators

Arizonans for Affordable Energy, a group bankrolled by APS to oppose the proposed Clean Energy initiative has begun a new round of robocalls "warning" people to beware the petition circulators.

Arizona's Politics received the call Thursday morning, and was able to record it.

Matthew Benson, the indefatigable spokesman for AAFE, told Arizona's Politics that asking for the reactions of people who received the call "fascinating....(Y)ou're fine w/ them using felons (in violation of state law) but have a real beef with us letting people know about it."

Here's the call:

Of course, both halves of that statement are incorrect assumptions

From the inevitable legal challenges to previous initiative petitions, we have learned that petition gathering firms screen the people they hire to circulate for criminal records. People who have not had their voting rights restored following a felony conviction are not hired because they are not eligible to vote or to circulate petitions. (They are not ineligible due to safety concerns or identity theft concerns.) We have also learned that a few people with felony convictions typically slip through the screening efforts due to incomplete databases and varying laws regarding restoration of rights .

But, pretending that AAFE is simply making the calls as an (Arizona) public service when the calls (and videos) are clearly trying to use over the top scare tactics is not typical.




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BREAKING (OR, IS THAT "FIXING"): Arizona's Politics RE-POSTS McSally's Missing DACA Video Plus Transcript

This afternoon, CNN broke the news that Arizona Rep. Martha McSally (R-CD2) has removed a year-old video in which she urges the White House to assure DACA recipients that they be "protected" until there is a legislative fix. The video was removed from her Congressional website (and from her official YouTube channel).

As a public service, Arizona's Politics is re-posting both the removed video and a transcript of McSally's comments - in which she also states that "uncertainty certainly brings fear to my constituents that are in this limbo."

CNN's KFile investigative unit published their article online*, explaining why it was the office of the Congresswoman-and-now-Senate-candidate who deleted the video. And, while the removal is certainly a newsworthy action - given McSally's drift to a hardline DACA position since Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) announced that he would not seek re-election - the continued presence of the video from other sources is also important to note.

McSally's comments came during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on President Trump's budget request for the Department of Homeland Security. McSally was questioning then-DHS Secretary (now Trump Chief of Staff) John Kelly.

The Committee still has the video from the hearing posted on its website. (Fortunately, there is no 2-minute gap.) The video below should start from the DACA discussion.


Here is the transcript (from Google, with light editing for clarity by Arizona's Politics) of their interaction about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals:

McSALLY: Thank you, and I want to

117:56

follow up on the DACA issue. You know,

117:58

while I don't agree with kind of how it

118:00

was done from roles and responsibilities

118:03

of the branches of government, the

118:04

reality is that we're dealing

118:05

with real people. These kids who were

118:07

brought here into the country at no

118:09

fault of their own as children as you

118:10

know. In Arizona there's 57,000 of them,

118:13

and because of the program they came

118:16

forward to the government. They gave

118:18

their personal information - where they

118:20

live, they their biometric data, their

118:22

fingerprints. They went through a

118:24

background check, they've graduated from

118:25

high school, they've served in the

118:26

military. And I agree with you that we

118:30

need to come up with a legislative

118:31

solution here to address this issue and

118:33

I'd urge our colleagues to do that. I

118:35

think Carlos Curbelo’s bill is a good

118:37

place to start and I really think we

118:39

need to move that forward. But in the

118:40

Meantime, uncertainty certainly brings

118:42

fear to my constituents that are in this

118:45

limbo. Can you assure my constituents who

118:49

are in this place - until we solve this

118:51

legislatively -  that they are going to be

118:53

protected and that they're not having to

118:56

worry about it.

KELLY: As I said many, many, many

119:00

times on this topic we are not targeting

119:02

DACA recipients. But that said and it's

119:08

I'm not gonna let you off the hook you

119:09

got to solve this problem. A different

119:11

man in this job, a woman, might have a

119:14

different view of it. I'm not going to

119:16

let the Congress off the hook. You've got

119:17

to solve it. A different person in this

119:19

job might have a different view.

McSALLY: And, and

119:22

I agree with you again I want to urge

119:23

our colleagues on both side of the aisle

119:24

to deal with reality. Forget about

119:26

ideology or how we got here, but now

119:29

we're dealing with reality and we got to

119:30

solve this problem based on what's

119:32

practical and what's compassionate and

119:34

also upholding the rule of law and in

119:36

the precedent. So I appreciate that, thank you.

119:38

you mr. secretary

McSally is in a much-publicized three-way primary contest against immigration hardliners Joe Arpaio and Kelli Ward. (The current frontrunner for the Democratic nomination is Rep. Kyrsten Sinema.)

*CNN's headline indicates that McSally was "Praising DACA"; however, there are no real words of praise from either McSally or Kelly. Rather, she is acknowledging that the reality on the ground is that the DACA recipients came forward and gave the government lots of information.





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JUST DESSERTS - OR, IS THAT DESERTS: Arizona Governor Ducey Dines With President Trump, And Ice Cream Headaches Ensue

Maybe it mostly reflects what's on my mind the most during summer, but my first thought was "ice cream." Whether Arizona Governor Doug Ducey brought a gift of the President's favorite creation, whether Ducey (and, everyone) only got a "like it" while Trump got a "love it", etc.

(Add in your thoughts, below.)

For new readers who are not aware, Gov. Ducey was the CEO of Cold Stone Creamery before running for State Treasurer in 2010.

(h/t to Chris Herstam for capturing photo)

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Cox v. Collins - Arizona Decision

Two points - (1) Bill Montgomery is not the police departments’ lawyer, so they should ignore him and (2) Montgomery’s claim that attorney ethical rules apply to the release of law enforcement records was flatly rejected by the AZ Supreme Court 25 years ago in Cox v. Collins. https://t.co/jfizcemb9O

— Dan Barr (@DanCBarr) May 21, 2018

   Cox Arizona Publications, Inc.  v Collins by arizonaspolitics on Scribd

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GOING TO TRIAL: Corporation Commission Corruption Case Set For Trial This Month, Judge Denies Most Of Defendants' Pre-Trial Motions and Says Lobbyist's Ex-Wife-Turned-Informant Can Testify

The federal bribery trial for the former Chairman of the Arizona Corporation Commission, his wife, a prominent lobbyist and a utility owner remains set for trial later this month, and the Judge yesterday denied nine of the Defendants' pre-trial motions to dismiss the case or to limit the evidence that the government can use. In so doing, he found that the lobbyist's ex-wife-turned-informant can testify.

(photos compiled by azfamily.com)

The trial of former Chair Gary Pierce, his wife Sherry, lobbyist Jim Norton and utility owner George Johnson will begin on May 30. Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge John Tuchi accepted arguments from attorneys for both sides for 1 1/2 hours, and asked for further argument on whether former Corporation Commission Utilities Chief Thomas Broderick should be permitted to testify against the defendants.

Broderick abruptly quit as Director of Utilities in August 2016, after only one year on the job. The indictment was handed up in May of the following year.

The Court also partly granted a defense motion to dismiss or break up Count Two of the indictment - which alleged that Sherry Pierce was paid for a "job" in which she had no tasks to perform and that a proposed real estate transaction was set up to benefit the Pierces.

Judge Tuchi denied Norton's motion to exclude any information provided to the FBI by his former wife. He had attempted to invoke the marital privilege; however, the privilege does not apply if both spouses are involved in criminal activity. Kelly Norton reportedly told the FBI details about the proposed real estate transaction and the payments to Ms. Pierce. (Ms. Pierce was working for Rep. Andy Biggs when the indictment was announced; he eventually let her go.)

During the pre-trial phase, there were indications that the FBI is still investigating other possible crimes that could be jeopardized by revealing details of the investigation. Those questions have not yet been answered.

The Court also denied motions to dismiss the case - or parts of the case - based on 1st Amendment grounds, alleging improper grand jury proceedings, and violating the statute of limitations.

The corruption case alleges that the Pierces received benefits from Johnson Utilities - through George Johnson and Jim Norton - in return for ensuring that the Corporation Commission allowed small utility owners such as Johnson to charge their customers for the owners' personal income taxes.


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