Newly released emails, discovered through a public records request, were released on Tuesday and show that former Elections Analyst at the Arizona Secretary of State’s office Garrett Archer may have used government resources to advance Katie Hobbs’ political career and influence elections in early 2019, immediately after she entered the Secretary of State’s office.
The Gateway Pundit has reported extensively on the stolen 2022 election for Governor, where Katie Hobbs was running against Kari Lake. Hobbs, serving as Secretary of State, was responsible for overseeing voting machine logic and accuracy testing and elections statewide when 60% of voting machines failed in Maricopa County.
Archer is notorious for trying to discredit claims of election fraud and defending Maricopa County’s shady election procedures with ABC 15, a local affiliate of ABC News. He was previously a Senior Elections Analyst at the Arizona Secretary of State from September 2016 to April 2019. During his tenure, Archer also served as project manager for the Access Voter Information Database, known as AVID.
He is now working tirelessly to cover up the election fraud in Arizona and once even appeared to urge criminal charges against TGP reporter Jordan Conradson for lawfully reporting on fraudulent mail-in ballot signatures and publishing files with redacted voter mail-in ballots and voter registrations, which exposed Maricopa County’s phony mail-in ballot scheme.
But it looks like he and Katie Hobbs may have violated the law by using government resources to advance Hobbs’ political campaign.
On January 7, 2019, Archer emailed Twitter from his official government email address, ostensibly during work hours on a government salary and with government computer hardware and software, requesting blue checkmark verification on Katie Hobbs’ personal and campaign account, @KatieHobbs. Twitter responded on January 9, “Unfortunately, our team only submits verification requests for official government profiles like @SecretaryHobbs and exceptions are pretty rare.” Hobbs is CC’d in the email chain.
Twitter later agreed to submit a request for verification while notifying Archer and Katie Hobbs that it is not a guarantee and that the account “looks to be primarily political campaign content.”
Before Elon Musk purchased Twitter and started selling premium subscriptions on the platform, now known as X, a blue checkmark was highly valuable, especially for political campaigns and for politicians outside the scope of their official duties.
The Gateway Pundit consulted a legal expert, who questioned whether Archer’s use of Hobbs’ official position as Secretary of State to secure the ‘blue check’ benefit for Hobbs’ personal Twitter account was legal. “At the time, this privilege was only available under very specific circumstances and, based on Twitter’s response, was not readily available to her, which could be a violation of ARS 38-504(C),” said the attorney
ARS 38-504(C) states, “A public officer or employee shall not use or attempt to use the officer’s or employee’s official position to secure any valuable thing or valuable benefit for the officer or employee that would not ordinarily accrue to the officer or employee in the performance of the officer’s or employee’s official duties if the thing or benefit is of such character as to manifest a substantial and improper influence on the officer or employee with respect to the officer’s or employee’s duties.”
Additionally, ARS 16-192 states, “this state and special taxing districts and any public agency, department, board, commission, committee, council or authority shall not spend or use public resources to influence an election, including the use or expenditure of monies, accounts, credit, materials, equipment, buildings, facilities, vehicles, postage, telecommunications, computer hardware and software, web pages and personnel and any other thing of value of the public entity.”
ARS 16-192 may apply to the issue because using public resources to verify Hobbs’ account, which was used for personal and campaign purposes, could be construed as an attempt to influence the outcome of her reelection or election to higher office. Even Twitter’s Government and Elections team noted that the account “looks to be primarily political campaign content.”
And it was used primarily for her political campaign in the last election:
Next stop: Flagstaff pic.twitter.com/kuLbKFXwPq
— Katie Hobbs (@katiehobbs) November 5, 2022
This is also the same political campaign account that Katie Hobbs used in 2017 to label Trump supporters “neo-Nazis.”
.@realDonaldTrump has made it abundantly clear he’s more interested in pandering to his neo-nazi base than being @POTUS for all Americans.
— Katie Hobbs (@katiehobbs) August 15, 2017
Via @TxSaving on X:
SOOO Mr. GARRETT ARCHER..why do you purport to be so unaware of what Hobbs or Maricopa did when clearly you neglected to mention you stayed on & worked for her?
Funny you never mentioned this.You play dumb constantly about things you have much more PERSONAL knowledge… pic.twitter.com/vw76Umplv0
— TXSavingTheUSA (@TxSaving) March 12, 2024
Archer responded to the revelation of his seemingly illegal actions while working for Katie Hobbs by noting that he did not secretly leave or neglect to disclose his previous employment. However, he does not currently have an explanation for his use of government resources to boost Katie Hobbs’ political campaign.
