8 Nov 7th-Nov 13th, 2024 phoenixnewtimes.com PHOENIX NEW TIMES | NEWS | FEATURE | FOOD & DRINK | ARTS & CULTURE | MUSIC | CONCERTS | CANNABIS | Keyboard Warrior County attorney’s fiance targeted her critics through burner accounts. BY STEPHEN LEMONS E arlier this year, journalists and politicians who have criticized Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell were the target of social media grousing and insults from a pair of anonymous accounts on X, the site formerly known as Twitter. Now, thanks to testimony given in Maricopa County Superior Court in September, those accounts have been unmasked as belonging to Paul Stout, who confirmed under oath that he ran the burner accounts and is Mitchell’s fiance. The revelation surfaced in September as Stout took the stand to defend an Aug. 22 injunction he obtained against suspended attorney Vladimir Gagic after a social media tiff between the two over Mitchell got too personal. The court sided with Stout and upheld the injunction. In the process, though, the 63-year-old former employee of the Arizona Department of Child Safety outed himself as a keyboard warrior who has angrily inserted himself into the mentions of reporters and politicos in Maricopa County. The two accounts in question, @AZJayPaul and @AZ1Patriot, are now defunct. But in the course of his online feud with Stout, Gagic compiled files of posts from both accounts, many of which targeted critics and rivals of Mitchell. The @AZ1Patriot account took aim at Gina Godbehere, Mitchell’s opponent in this year’s Republican primary, calling Godbehere a “pandering liar” and a “scared chicken,” among other things. After Godbehere posted a Mother’s Day message on X, the account accused her of “exploiting Mother’s Day” and of wearing an “overly too tight shirt,” a comment Godbehere later referred to as a “creepy response” from her rival’s romantic partner. The @AZ1Patriot account went after figures who endorsed Godbehere over Mitchell, including GOP congressional candidate Abraham Hamadeh and former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. @AZ1Patriot called Hamadeh “dishonest Abe” and an “election denying crybaby” whose “political career is like a backed up toilet.” @AZ1Patriot also mocked Arpaio as “Grumpy Joe” and pointed out that the former sheriff had “cost taxpayers in excess of $250 million,” a reference to the Melendres v. Arpaio lawsuit that has landed the sheriff’s office under the scrutiny of a federal court for a decade. Ironically, Mitchell has criticized the outcome of the Melendres case. Using both accounts, Stout also took swipes at local journalists. Arizona Republic columnist Laurie Roberts and Republic criminal justice reporter Jimmy Jenkins drew his ire. So has Phoenix New Times, which @AZ1Patriot labeled “junk reporting” in response to a post by the paper’s news editor, Zach Buchanan. (@AZ1Patriot also mentioned this reporter briefly in one post.) The @AZJayPaul account derided ABC 15 reporter Nicole Grigg as a “fiction writer,” and it blasted erstwhile Democratic county attorney candidate Julie Gunnigle for her “flaming radical liberal views,” insisting that Gunnigle “isn’t qualified to be the lowest level supervisor at the MCAO. FACT!” New Times reached out to Stout directly via a phone number believed to be his, but Stout has not replied. A feud begins Stout’s online sniping might have remained undiscovered until he trolled Gagic, who posts frequently and sometimes manically on X. At the Sept. 16 hearing on the injunction he filed against the 50-year-old Gagic, Stout admitted using the @AZJayPaul account to start the feud with Gagic. “It probably started at the end of 2023, and I had seen some very negative posts directed at Rachel Mitchell, my fiancee, and so I responded,” Stout told the court. He claimed Mitchell never asked him to post on social media and that he deleted the @AZJayPaul account in late February 2024. Mitchell previously has refused to confirm or deny if Stout is her fiance, but she acknowledged him by name after he held the Bibles when she took her oath of office in 2022. She giddily thanked him for being “a bedrock of security and support” through the campaign, even attending fundraisers on her behalf. Stout also has contributed to Mitchell’s reelection campaign, donating $350 so far. When Gagic criticized Mitchell for her office’s controversial prosecution of Phoenix resident Jamaal Pennington on accusations of sex trafficking and sexual contact with a minor, @AZJayPaul lit into the attorney. Gagic had defended Pennington until the State Bar of Arizona went after Gagic for criticizing judges assigned to the case, suspending his law license for one year and fining him $6,000. As @AZJayPaul, Stout posted a link to Gagic’s disciplinary history and called Gagic “disgraced” and “delusional.” In another post, @AZJayPaul posted a YouTube video of Gagic being assaulted in court by Lamont Payne, whom Gagic was assigned to represent on behalf of Maricopa County Public Defense Services. Accused of biting a county corrections officer on the ankle, Payne had been ordered out of court by a judge for being disruptive when he unexpectedly sucker punched Gagic in the head. The assault made national news. “Can you explain why your client cold- cocked you in the courtroom?” @AZJayPaul asked Gagic in a back-and- forth on X. The @AZ1Patriot account remained active at least until a July 5 post, when the account denied being Stout and claimed to be a “married female.” Stout testified that he closed both accounts because he wanted to “disengage” from Gagic and that he misrepresented his identity in that July 5 post for the same reason. “I didn’t want to have any communica- tion with you,” Stout told Gagic under cross-examination, adding, “If I had to do it over again, I would not have had any communication whatsoever with you.” Trolling the wrong guy Stout soon learned he’d trolled the wrong person. Gagic told Maricopa County Commissioner Richard Albrecht, who presided over the hearings, that someone dropped a dime to him that @AZJayPaul was Stout. Gagic said he was “floored” and began investigating Stout and posting what he found out — or at least what he thought he’d found out. Gagic said he began posting about Stout because he believed Mitchell was “retali- ating against me by proxy, by using him to come after me, first as @AZJayPaul” and then as @AZ1Patriot. Gagic said he believed Stout had been using other anony- mous accounts, which Stout denied under oath. When an account he believed to be Stout addressed him directly, Gagic fired back, writing, “Fine Paul name the place Saturday … ” Stout testified that Gagic’s challenge alarmed him and made him feel harassed, and it was one of several incidents mentioned in Stout’s petition for an injunc- tion against harassment. Gagic posted Stout’s signature and court paperwork regarding Stout’s child support. Gagic also dug up and posted a request for an injunc- tion against harassment filed against Stout by a neighbor in 2007. On YouTube, Gagic also posted audio from the hearing in which Stout successfully challenged the injunction, with the title “Rachel Mitchell, Maricopa County Attorney fiance Paul Stout and his History of violence.” Gagic also posted court paperwork from Texas concerning a “Paul M. Stout” who was convicted of a sex crime — either ignoring or unaware at the time that Stout’s middle initial is H — and wondered in a post if Mitchell’s fiance had been convicted of a similar crime and if Mitchell was hiding this from the public. “Even if not true,” Gagic wrote, “if RM can’t control her creepy psycho fiance, Paul Stout (center) held the Bibles when Rachel Mitchell was sworn in as Maricopa County Attorney in 2022. This year, he admitted in court to being her fiance and targeting her critics through anonymous social media accounts. (Maricopa County Attorney’s Office Facebook Page) Paul Stout, the fiance of Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell (above), testified in court that she helped him draft a proposed injunction against Vladimir Gagic, one of Mitchell’s most vociferous online critics. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr) >> p 10 | NEWS | | NEWS |
