Rep. Liz Harris lied about cartel 'bribery' scandal, should face punishment, ethics panel says

Ray Stern Arizona Republic

A Chandler lawmaker violated the rules of the Arizona House of Representatives through her role in a public presentation that accused elected officials and others of unvetted claims about participating in a cartel "bribery" scheme, the House Ethics Committee has found.

The nine-page committee report released Tuesday condemns first-time officeholder Rep. Liz Harris for falsely telling the committee that she didn't know what her guest would say at the Feb. 23 presentation and deemed it appropriate for House members to "decide what disciplinary measures should be taken."

The report stated that Harris violated Rule 1 of the state House's rulebook, committing "disorderly behavior" and "damaging the institutional integrity of the House." The House cannot "tolerate" behavior like Harris's that "erodes public trust in the Legislative process," it continued.

Harris could face punishments that range from censure, which requires a simple majority vote, to expulsion from the House, which would take a two-thirds vote of lawmakers.

The five-member Ethics Committee chaired by Rep. Joseph Chaplik, R-Scottsdale, all agreed on five main points, including that she "knew or was at least aware" of her guest's allegations and "took steps" to hide those details from the Legislature before the presentation.

Harris appeared before the committee in a March 30 hearing and argued that she had the right to present constituent complaints about potential wrongdoing. She denied that her guest had made direct criminal allegations.

Read the report: Arizona House Ethics committee says Liz Harris should face punishment

In the 41-minute presentation at the joint House and Senate Election Committee hearing in February, Scottsdale insurance agent Jacqueline Breger shocked officials with accusations that Gov. Katie Hobbs, House Speaker Ben Toma, lawmakers, judges, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and others conspired with a Mexican drug cartel and received bribes through a scheme using property deeds.

Breger failed to mention that two women she claimed were key players in the scheme were the ex-wife and former mother-in-law of her boyfriend, John Thaler, a lawyer with a suspended license, who was the source of the claims. Thaler had previously outlined the same bribery scheme in court proceedings related to this divorce and child custody case; two separate judges in federal and Maricopa County Superior courts called the narrative “delusional.”

The House Ethics Committee began its investigation after an official complaint was filed by Rep. Stephanie Stahl Hamilton, D-Tucson.

Toma, R-Glendale, did not respond to a message seeking comment about the next steps involving discipline for Harris.

Democratic House Minority Leader Andrés Cano, D-Tucson, said in a statement that it was time to hold Harris accountable.

"The report now clearly demonstrates that Representative Harris has damaged the integrity of the institution that we hold dear, and House Republicans need to tell us what their plan is to make sure this doesn't happen again," Cano wrote.

Harris did not respond to a request for comment.

A narrow victory brought Harris to office

Harris is an avid election-conspiracy promoter and real estate agent who first ran for legislative office unsuccessfully in 2020. She led an unofficial canvassing operation in 2021 that contacted thousands of Arizona voters in a controversial attempt to help the state Senate's partisan audit of the 2020 election.

Last November, she narrowly beat Republican competitor Julie Willoughby for a House seat in Legislative District 13, which encompasses much of Chandler and part of Gilbert (a Democrat won the district's other House seat). After Harris won, she promptly announced there were "clear signs of foul play" in the election.

She also vowed that she wouldn't vote on any bill unless the 2022 election was redone. But she voted for a GOP budget — later vetoed by Hobbs — after she was told she could hold the all-day election presentation. Toma previously told The Arizona Republic that Harris would have voted for the budget "regardless" of whether she was allowed to hold the February presentation.

Harris brought in several speakers who talked about alleged election fraud, but only Breger's testimony gained national attention. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Arizona constituents and social media users apparently believed Breger's testimony. Calls for the arrest of the governor spread on social media immediately afterward.

In a response to the ethics complaint last month, Harris said the Arizona Constitution affords people the right to "freely speak" to their elected officials, especially when they feel new laws could help "block the danger of mal-administered elections."

When later asked by the Ethics Committee if she knew what Breger would present, Harris answered, "Absolutely, positively, 100% no."

That answer wasn't accurate, according to the committee.

Text messages key to investigation

Statements posted online by Jennifer Wright, a former assistant state attorney general who led the state's Election Integrity Unit, indicated that Harris knew about the "deed scheme" before the presentation, the committee found.

Harris testified that she had met with Breger beforehand and knew about a book Thaler was writing about the allegations. Still, Harris claimed she was "surprised" by Breger's presentation. The members of the committee were not convinced. "The Committee finds that Rep. Harris was not surprised or upset by Breger's testimony and REJECTS Rep. Harris's testimony to the contrary," the report states.

The biggest revelation in the ethics investigation were screenshots of text messages between Harris, Breger and Thaler that someone anonymously dropped off to the Legislature. The batch of messages "significantly undermines" Harris's version of events, the report stated.

The text-message thread shows that when Harris asked Breger for a title for the presentation, Breger replied that they wanted something that "wouldn't raise a red flag." Although Harris denied to the Ethics Committee that she knew what Breger meant by that, her "alleged confusion ... was not reflected in her reply to Breger," the report states. She responded to Breger by saying that Breger's idea for a title wasn't vague enough and "would draw the wrong press."

Harris texted Breger that House Speaker Toma wanted to see all "electronically formatted presentations" the day before the Feb. 23 hearing but added that Breger could bring paper copies on the day of the hearing. The texts led committee members to believe that Harris "had hoped to avoid providing the presentation to House leadership before the hearing" and that "she was not taken by surprise" or "shocked" by Breger's allegations of bribe-taking, the report said.

As Breger impugned lawmakers with the claims, neither Harris — who was acting as vice chair of the joint elections committee that day — nor the chair, Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, stopped Breger. Only Sen. Ken Bennett, R-Prescott, stopped Breger to say that the hearing was not the appropriate place to raise criminal allegations. That Harris didn't take that step first "further undermines her testimony that she was oblivious of what Breger would present," the report said.

As Harris told Breger in a text after the hearing: "It was all how it was intended to be."

Thaler told The Republic last month that he also talked to Harris about the allegations before Breger's presentation, though the committee did not include him in the report.

In an April 3 letter to Chaplik, Thaler denied that he gave the committee the text-thread screenshots. He demanded that the committee stop using the texts in their deliberations and to "destroy all copies." The House Rules attorney replied in a letter to Thaler that he had "failed to identify any legal bases for those demands."

Reach the reporter at rstern@arizonarepublic.com or 480-276-3237. Follow him on Twitter @raystern.

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