Chandler attorney Tom Ryan has dropped his daisy cutter on Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne's office, and there ain't much left standing.
Today, Ryan submitted to the Arizona Secretary of State's Office a 15-page sworn affidavit from his client, ex-AG staffer Sarah Beattie, describing extensive political work and campaign fundraising being done on state time by AG employees and by the Attorney General himself.
In her affidavit, Beattie, 26, tells how she did campaign work on state time under the direction first of AG Outreach Director Kathleen Winn, then Horne himself, once Horne, afraid she would jump to another campaign, upped her salary from $32,000 to $45,000 per year.
She attests to watching Horne himself make "a substantial amount of solicitation calls" from inside his Executive Office, to using a campaign fundraising file marked "Border Patrol" from Horne's office to make fundraising calls, to herself and others creating campaign documents on state time, and trading e-mails that were campaign related.
Examine the extensive exhibits to Sarah Beattie's sworn affidavit.
In addition, Beattie alleges a conspiracy by Horne and other AG staffers to keep all of this campaign work during office time a secret.
See also: Tom Horne's Zombieland Amusement Park Dive-Bombed by the Irish Wolfhound
"Anyone reviewing these records will see that for the most part, they are from private email accounts, even though they are sent during regular working hours," she states in her affidavit.
She also notes that her supervisors made it, "very clear from the onset that any campaign related communications were to be sent only on private email accounts and private laptops, and not on the Attorney General's email account."
It's a dictate Horne himself cannot stick to, according to Beattie, as Horne once inadvertently sent her a response on her official office e-mail, then asked her to delete it while he watched.
Beattie notes that the AG's office and supporters of Horne will attempt to smear her.
Indeed, that process has already begun, if one looks to some far-right blogs, which are trying mightily to transform Horne into the political reincarnation of Andy Thomas, forgetting that Horne is the very former Democrat and RiNO they denounced while he was running against Thomas in the 2010 GOP primary for AG.
But what gives her credibility, more than the fact she is not suing and has nothing to gain from blowing the whistle, is the cache of e-mails and documents, allegedly sent and created on state time. These are the exhibits to her affidavit, and are accompanied by damning metadata.
I'll have more to say on these later. But for now, I offer them for you to read as given to me by Ryan, redacted in some instances by Ryan so as not to give out personal e-mails. Though who sent those e-mails, and what time they were sent remains obvious.
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