Mark Finchem takes his traveling fraud show to Tucson

The Desperate Arizona Quest to Uncover a Conspiracy continues on Monday as Rep. Mark Finchem convenes a “hearing” into voter fraud in the state’s 2020 election.

This time, he’s delving deep into the details of a 13-month old email.

An email from some anonymous guy whose claims already have been investigated and discarded.

Told you desperation has set in.

Finchem held a 2020 'hearing' with no evidence

Finchem is one of the state’s loudest Stop the Stealers, an Oro Valley Republican who is hoping to howl his way into the Secretary of State’s Office so he can oversee elections in one of the country’s key swing states.

It was Finchem who hosted a daylong “hearing” in November 2020, allowing Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani to regale the public with various conspiracy theories of the many ways in which Arizona’s election was stolen. Giuliani spent all day presenting “expert” witnesses, not a single one of whom provided any actual evidence of fraud.

But Finchem was undaunted.

“Ladies and gentleman, this is a skirmish,” he said, at the end of that Nov. 30 meeting. “You ain’t seen nothing yet. Because when Satan wants to extinguish a light, he will stop at nothing. So be on your guard, put on the full armor of God, and be prepared to fight.”

Five weeks later, Finchem was in Washington, D.C., for the Jan. 6 rally-turned-riot in which Trump supporters broke into the Capitol hoping to stop certification of the election results.

He continues his quest to undermine voter confidence

Since then, he’s been running around the country calling for the election to be decertified based upon a Maricopa County election audit that turned up no evidence of widespread fraud. Even the auditors acknowledge there may be explanations for the potential problems they cited.

And still, Finchem continues his quest to undermine voter confidence in elections (and just coincidently, boost his own campaign to move up the political food chain).

In a totally shocking move that no one could possibly have forseen, Trump endorsed him in the secretary of state’s race. But even with that endorsement, polls don’t show Finchem with any advantage over his chief Republican rival, Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita. Rep. Shawnna Bolick is also running in the Republican primary.

So now he’s moving to build on the fantasy that conspiracy was afoot in last year’s election.

To wit: fraud in Pima County.

Still, no evidence of those 35,000 ballots

Finchem is holding a daylong “hearing” on Monday on a 13-month-old email from some anonymous guy, detailing a plot by the Pima County Democratic Party to insert 35,000 phony votes into the system. (Note the use of the quotation marks around the word "hearing".  That's because Finchem lacks the authority to actually do anything. Thank goodness.)

The Attorney General’s Elections Integrity Unit already investigated the claim but didn’t find any evidence. Neither has anybody else.

Still, Finchem, during an Oct. 9 Trump rally in Des Moines, announced that 35,000 fake votes had been found.

“We had a whistleblower who sent an email not just to the DOJ but to every single legislator saying, there’s 34,000 or 35,000 fictitious voters, and they’ve been inserted in system, and we’re going to never find them,” he told the rallying Iowans. “Well, we believe we found them.”

This was news to the AG’s Office, which on Oct. 14 sent Finchem a letter asking him to turn over “the evidence you purport to possess.”

No word on whether Finchem responded. (Neither he nor the AG’s Office replied to requests for comment.)

But Finchem’s word was apparently enough for Trump, who on Nov. 23 cited “the recent revelation of 35,000 fictitious votes in Pima County” as further evidence that Arizona’s election should be decertified.

Expect a 'fruitful investigation' ... of sour grapes

Now, two months later, comes Finchem's "hearing" .

Look for a bunch of mumbo-jumbo from the likes of Shiva Ayyadurai, whose painfully uninformed analysis of early ballot envelope images – and his response to Maricopa County’s debunking of his findings – was one of the laughable moments in the Maricopa County audit.

Look also for plenty of impassioned speeches about stolen elections. Fires, after all, must be continually stoked if you want to keep them burning hot. And until Election Day 2022.

“Over the last 12 months,” Finchem’s press release announcing Monday’s "hearing" says, “a few Members of the Legislature and resources from the various election integrity organizations have conducted a quiet, but fruitful investigation into the substance and reliability of the allegation.”

My guess the fruit in this "hearing" … as in last year’s "hearing," as in this year’s audit … will be lemons. Or sour grapes, maybe.

Really, it’s just as Finchem said a year ago: “You ain’t seen nothing yet."

He was right. We haven’t.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

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