Former Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said he’s eager to be a “kick-ass litigator” for Boies Schiller as he faces an ethics inquiry tied to his past investigation into alleged 2020 voting irregularities in his state.
“I was the first elected Republican in the country to say Donald Trump lost, and I never said that the election was fraudulent,” he said in a statement. “It’s unfortunate that there are people who still try to politicize the bipartisan work our office did.”
Whether the Republican can shake off the Arizona state bar investigation and put his political past behind him while winning cases and attracting clients will dictate the success of his partnership at Boies Schiller Flexner, which announced Brnovich’s hire Oct. 25.
The firm, which has been criticized in the past for its work for Harvey Weinstein and Theranos Inc., declined to comment on the investigation. Boies Schiller said in a statement that it conducts a “careful process” before admitting anyone to a partnership.
Public officials with partisan reputations can be a “hot potato,” said Peter Zeughauser, a law firm management consultant at the Zeughauser Group. At the same time, “there’s a lot of people who want to hire someone who is very prominent, and maybe even partisan, to do legal work for them.”
While he was attorney general and also running in the Republican primary for Senate, Brnovich in April 2022 released an interim report finding “serious vulnerabilities” in the election system of Maricopa County, which encompasses Phoenix and makes up nearly two-thirds of the state’s population.
Nearly a year later, his successor in the attorney general’s office, Democrat Kris Mayes, released a memorandum prepared by Brnovich’s office in September 2022 that found no evidence of systemic election fraud. Brnovich had kept the memo private.
Arizona Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs told reporters that Brnovich’s actions were “concerning,” and her general counsel asked the state bar to investigate his “likely unethical conduct.” The bar acknowledged it has an open investigation.
Brnovich “could have used his position as top prosecutor of the state to set the record straight that Arizona’s November 2020 election wasn’t stolen,” said Stephen Richer, a Republican who oversees Maricopa County elections. Instead, Brnovich used his office to “persecute” election workers for political purposes and “that’s disgusting,” he said.
Richer also accused Brnovich of contradicting the findings of his investigators and omitting information about his inquiry in the interim report.
Boies Role
Born in Detroit as the son of Yugoslavian immigrants, Brnovich moved to Arizona as a child. After he graduated from the University of San Diego School of Law, he cut his teeth as a prosecutor in Arizona and later worked as the state’s gaming director.
Arizona voters in 2014 and 2018 put him in the attorney general’s office, where he gained a reputation as a hard-line conservative on issues such as border policies and abortion. He also defended Arizona’s voting restrictions before the Supreme Court in 2021 and won an $85 million settlement against Alphabet Inc.’s Google in a consumer privacy lawsuit.
He lost the 2022 Republican Senate primary to Trump-backed Blake Masters, who went on to lose the general election to Mark Kelly. Brnovich’s term as attorney general expired in January. He renewed his law license in California to take the Boies Schiller job in Los Angeles.
His next act pairs him with a firm that has a reputation for not shying from controversial work and clients.
Firm founder David Boies faced criticism over his hardball tactics on behalf of Weinstein, the disgraced Hollywood mogul and convicted sex offender and Elizabeth Holmes, the former Theranos who was convicted of fraud.
“There’s a perception that litigation firms may have a bit more wiggle room in terms of public perception and political fallout,” said Dan Binstock, a legal recruiter in Washington. “The absence of other practices may lessen the breadth of the potential backlash.”
A powerful New York-based litigation firm, Boies Schiller is coming off a year in which revenue fell slightly to $220 million but profits per partner rose 13% to $2.5 million as its ranks thinned.
The firm’s major clients in recent years have included Tesla Energy, Delta Airlines Inc., and Progressive Inc. It’s also led a class action accusing Google of privacy violations.
Boies Schiller is in line to earn a huge windfall from a $2.67 billion settlement the firm secured in an antitrust case targeting health insurance plans offered by Blue Cross Blue Shield.
The firm envisions Brnovich aiding its expansion on the West Coast while tapping into the connections he gained as Arizona’s top law enforcement official, said Matthew L. Schwartz, a Boies Schiller managing partner. Relationships from that network will be “of extreme value to the firm’s clients,” he said.
“Whatever you think about his politics, there’s no dispute that Mark’s an outstanding lawyer,” Schwartz said. “He fits with a lot of our strategic needs: growth on the West Coast, state AG enforcement practice.”
Bar Complaint
The Arizona state bar opens investigations after bar counsel reviews a charge of misconduct and determines a probe is warranted, a bar spokesperson said. The bar declined to share whose misconduct charge prompted the investigation.
Investigations can lead to a range of outcomes, including the bar filing a formal complaint seeking disciplinary action.
The bar is likely scrutinizing whether Brnovich violated professional rules relating to honesty, said Keith Swisher, a professor at University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers College of Law.
Brnovich predicted he’d put the “bar complaint stuff behind me” now that he’s out of politics. He defended his handling of the election investigation, saying his office “provided a public service by systematically debunking” unfounded claims such as dead people voting.
While some state officials criticized him for stoking fears of a faulty election system, Brnovich insists he did the opposite. “I refused to say the election was stolen and it cost me a US Senate seat.”