| NEWS | Reality Checked The leaked email that turned Mark Finchem into a conspiracy czar. BY ELIAS WEISS Democrats had tampered with the 17 local, state, and federal races in Pima County. Finchem, a Tucson Republican, didn’t A used to be a conspiracy theorist. Then he received an email, one week after the 2020 general election, that sent him tumbling down the Big Lie rabbit hole. He became so convinced that the sanc- tity of Arizona’s elections has been thor- oughly deflowered, he even called fraud on his own win in the 2020 general elec- tion, according to emails leaked to Phoenix New Times. Finchem not only propagated the tire- lessly debunked Big Lie that the 2020 pres- idential election was stolen from Donald Trump, but he played an intimate role in concocting it — along with other offshoot conspiracy theories centered around elec- tion fraud. The conspiracy theory czar demanded an emergency grand jury convene to investigate allegations that more than half a million votes for Democratic candidates were planted by a high-ranking liberal cabal in races across the county. “The growing body of evidence showing election fraud is stunning,” Finchem said in one email sent to seven Arizona Republicans in November 2020 and provided to New Times. The recipients included then-State Representative Bret Roberts, who resigned in 2021 and gave no reason, and Frosty Taylor, a Maricopa County Republican Committee member and one-time award- winning editor of the short-lived Paradise Valley News-Progress. Finchem is not able to seek another two years in the state House due to Arizona’s four-term limit. That’s part of why he’s running for secretary of state and gunning to replace Katie Hobbs, the Democratic incumbent. Last week GOP voters nominated him for that post. Finchem’s other reason: his grave concerns about the chain of custody for mail-in ballots, the preferred method of voting for more than 90 percent of Arizona voters. For Finchem, the Big Lie started with a November 10, 2020, email to the U.S. Department of Justice from a person who identified himself as Brian Watson. Watson later forwarded that email to Finchem. In the email, Watson claims that he was invited to a secret meeting “by the Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons democrat party” that was held in “Pima County Arizona” on September 10, 2020. He begs for anonymity and asks not to be contacted, apparently unaware that his email would be a public record. At the meeting, unnamed high-ranking Democrats shared their plot to embed hundreds of thousands of fake votes, he claimed. It would have been one of the most prodigious cases of election fraud in American history. “There were approximately 35,000 fraud votes added to each democrat candi- date’s vote totals,” Watson wrote. “Candidates impacted include county, state, and federal election candidates.” Even if there were fraudulent votes in the 2020 election, Felipe Perez, Finchem’s Democratic opponent, didn’t have enough to win. Finchem won election to a fourth term in the Arizona House. Without the fraudulent votes cited in Watson’s email, President Joe Biden and U.S. Senator Mark Kelly, both Democrats, would both still have won Pima County. Everyone who received Watson’s email ignored it. Except for Finchem. He called on Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich to convene a grand jury to substantiate Watson’s claims. Chris Baker, a Republican consultant who was one of the seven recipients of Watson’s emails, said he tried to email Watson in 2020, but the account was already deactivated. Baker managed Finchem’s campaigns at the time but no longer works with him. “Mark really bought into the idea that something had gone wrong with the election and was in a mindset to believe what anyone said, including a no-name person using a made-up email,” Baker told New Times. State Representative Mark Finchem won the GOP nomination for secretary of state. “It only ever existed for that one email, and I explained that to Mark,” he continued. “Mark wanted to believe it, so he put aside all his legislative expertise, any common sense he had, and decided that it was true even when all evidence indicated it was false.” Baker spent hours explaining to Finchem that the email was “nothing more than a random person trying to have fun with him and other legislators,” he said. “It should not be taken remotely seriously.” Emails from New Times to Watson couldn’t be delivered because the address no longer exists. Finchem did not respond to interview requests from New Times, including when we caught up to him at GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s election night watch party. ‘On his own kamikaze mission’ In last week’s election, Finchem faced down three challengers in the Republican primary and won easily. One leading contender, Ugenti-Rita, doesn’t deny the Big Lie, but even she crit- icized Finchem for taking the cryptic tip seriously. “He is constantly off trying to pursue things that are not based in reality,” Ugenti-Rita told New Times. “It’s like he’s on his own kamikaze mission.” Ugenti-Rita said Finchem isn’t in the race to build relationships with busi- nesses and secure Arizona’s elections but to get former President Donald Trump back in office. Finchem represents District 11, New Times Photo-illustration Ame Deal was found dead in 2011. upheld Allen’s death sentence in a 73-page opinion. The court rejected Allen’s argu- ments that her trial was flawed and unfair due to “misleading” statements by the pros- ecutor, Jeannette Gallagher, and improper admission of evidence. Allen had argued, for instance, that the prosecutor had incorrectly urged the jury to ignore mitigation evidence — sympathetic details about Allen’s life that might encourage them to give her a life sentence, not the death penalty. The prosecutor had argued, “The defen- dant’s family moved a lot. And exactly what does that have to do with padlocking [A.D.] in a box?” and “[H]ow does the fact that she had a miscarriage ... reduce her moral culpability for [A.D.’s] murder? It doesn’t. It has absolutely nothing to do with it.” But the court found that the prosecutor had not crossed a line, given that the jury was still instructed to consider all such evidence. “A reasonable jury could have found >>p 11 that Sammantha’s mitigation — consisting primarily of details regarding her upbringing — was not sufficiently substan- tial to call for leniency,” wrote s the drama of the 2020 presidential election wound down, Arizona State Representative Mark Finchem had a hunch that Deal Killer Death sentence upheld for one murderer of 10- year old Ame Deal, ‘The Girl in a Box.’ BY KATYA SCHWENK I t has been 11 years since Ame Deal was murdered — forced inside a plastic foot- locker in the heat of an Arizona summer and left to die. And it’s been nearly five years since Ame’s cousin, Sammantha Allen, was convicted of the 10-year-old’s murder and child abuse and sentenced to death. Her husband, John Allen, also faces the death penalty over Ame’s death. The pair became the first married couple sentenced to death in Arizona. Now, Sammantha Allen’s first appeal to spare her own life has failed. On July 26, the Arizona Supreme Court >>p 12 9 phoenixnewtimes.com | CONTENTS | FEEDBACK | OPINION | NEWS | FEATURE | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | FILM | CAFE | MUSIC | PHOENIX NEW TIMES AUG 11TH–AUG 17TH, 2022
