How Maricopa County’s top prosecutor got her loudest critic disbarred

Be careful what you tweet about the county attorney. She may make it her personal mission to scorch the very earth you walk upon.

Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell recently scored her pound of flesh from online troll and onetime defense lawyer Vladimir Gagic, who likes to pass the time by profanely criticizing her appearance and job performance on social media. And the State Bar of Arizona played cat’s paw to the thin-skinned prosecutor.

On May 14, a three-member disciplinary panel ruled in favor of the state bar’s complaint against Gagic, finding that Gagic’s insulting social media tirades against Mitchell and now-hubby Paul Stout had caused “potential harm (injury)” to the legal profession and had been “generally disrespectful of the court.” That thereby earned Gagic the ultimate sanction: immediate disbarment.

Harsh as that sounds, the ruling was effectively redundant. In 2023, the bar suspended Gagic for a year after he compared members of the local judiciary to “the Spanish Inquisition” and to participants in the Stalinist show trials. Gagic made those comparisons in briefs Gagic filed in defense of a Black man, Jamaal Pennington, who faced sex trafficking and child molestation charges. Gagic insists that Pennington was falsely accused.

The year-long suspension was a professional death sentence for Gagic, who was forced off Pennington’s case and faced a high hurdle of paying a fine, showing remorse and proving he had been rehabilitated from his bad behavior before he could be reinstated. Gagic, who previously had enjoyed a 20-year career as an attorney free of discipline, was unwilling to endure such sanctions.

So, why did the state bar double down on ejecting Gagic from the legal community? Because the bar, which is well-known for favoritism and for picking and choosing its targets accordingly, was acting on the dictates of Mitchell. Her complaints against Gagic for his arguably First Amendment-protected speech ran aground in now-shuttered criminal investigations performed by the Phoenix Police Department, the Arizona Attorney General’s Office and the FBI. But the state bar was more amenable.

The criminal investigations, done at the behest of Mitchell and her prickly beau, came after a social media war between Stout and Gagic, during which Gagic revealed that Stout was Mitchell’s fiancé and that the former shoe salesman and state employee had been using burner accounts to attack Mitchell’s critics online. That tiff resulted in Stout obtaining an injunction against harassment against Gagic — despite Gagic having made no direct threats of violence, save for a hypothetical invitation to mutual fisticuffs.

The two men have never met, except during a September 2024 court hearing, at which Gagic unsuccessfully challenged the order barring him from doing more than commenting “civilly” on X about Stout’s “ideas.” Despite Stout’s admission under oath that he had attacked others online under pseudonyms — and that Mitchell had helped him draft the complaint against Gagic — Maricopa County Superior Court commissioner Richard Albrecht ruled that Gagic had harassed Stout, saying that the First Amendment did not apply. The ruling was upheld by the Arizona Court of Appeals. 

Ever obstreperous, Gagic continued to mouth off about Mitchell and Stout on X, triggering the pair to kvetch endlessly to law enforcement, seeking Gagic’s arrest and prosecution. They were unsuccessful.

But Gagic’s insults, innuendo and countless fat jokes also prompted Mitchell to throw the punch that eventually landed. In July 2024, she emailed the state bar to demand that Gagic “be disbarred,” in part because “Gagic has been criticizing me on X for months.” 

And like a greyhound unleashed, the bar proceeded to do just that.

Cops, the AG and the FBI, oh my!

The bar took nearly two years to lower the axe on Gagic’s professional neck. By that time, three law enforcement agencies had wasted precious public resources investigating a guy whose primary offense was being obnoxious on a platform that now overwhelmingly exists to host derogatory content.

Records obtained by Phoenix New Times showed that in 2024, Stout repeatedly complained to the Phoenix Police Department about Gagic’s posts, alleging they violated the harassment order. Stout told the cops that Mitchell had “a conversation with the assistant chief” to instigate the investigation into Gagic and that “he and Rachel” were to be interviewed by the FBI because “the FBI felt there would be cyberstalking.”

Indeed, FBI agent Wyatt Storm served Gagic the injunction at Gagic’s home in August 2024. Storm was joined by three Maricopa County Sheriff’s deputies, who kept their hands on their holstered guns, as revealed by body-worn camera footage that Gagic obtained via a public records request and posted online.

A month later, according to FBI reports obtained via a federal public records lawsuit filed on Gagic’s behalf by Washington, D.C.-based attorney Wade McMullen, the FBI investigated Gagic for alleged “cyberstalking,” citing a violation of a federal statute that carries a possible punishment of up to five years imprisonment.

By the end of that year, the FBI had closed the case. Though not all of Gagic’s FBI file has been released, the records include a December 2024 turn-down letter from the office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona. It conceded that Gagic’s conduct may be “harassing in nature and offensive,” but it noted that the First Amendment “permits even offensive speech in many contexts.” 

The letter states that the FBI “concurred with the plan to close the matter” and offered reasons why a conviction was unlikely, including “mutual online communication between the victim and Mr. Gagic,” the “nature of the speech relating to a public figure running for office” and caselaw on cyberstalking that “requires a higher level of scrutiny” when a public figure is involved. Moreover, Gagic’s X account “does not include speech specifically threatening physical harm.”

This news apparently was not well-received by Mitchell and Stout. The FBI file includes an email to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, likely from Stout and/or Mitchell — as alleged “victims,” their names have been largely redacted from the documents — stating that the sender was “a bit disappointed with how the FBI has handled this situation.” The letter also asked for “a high-level overview.”

That was not to be. Records show that during a January 2025 Skype meeting with the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the complainants, an unnamed participant provided “an emotional response to the news of the declination and disconnected from the call prior to completion.”  Three guesses on who that was.

Probes by Phoenix police and the Arizona Attorney General’s Office also went nowhere. Records obtained by New Times show that Phoenix police investigated Gagic for aggravated harassment, a class 6 felony, passing it onto Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes’ desk in 2025. Mitchell had referred the case due to her glaring conflict of interest. 

Mayes’ office obtained an Orwellian search warrant for all Gagic’s communications on X and also interviewed Stout, who complained about Gagic’s “potential for violence.” Mayes’ office concluded that Gagic may be in violation of the court’s gag order — Gagic had continued to hurl epithets at Stout such as “psycho freakshow loser,” “loser pussy cocksucker” and “nasty dirtbag troll” — but the investigation also noted that Stout previously admitted in court that he had “used pseudonyms online to attack Gagic as well as political rivals of his wife.”

The same records show that after New Times asked about the search warrant on Gagic’s X account, Nicholas Klingerman, chief counsel of the attorney general’s criminal division, emailed Mayes’ spokesperson Richie Taylor to say that the warrant “should have been sealed.” He added that he was “not sure we’ll prosecute anything” and that “now I’m concerned about causing unnecessary concern.”

In March, Taylor told New Times that Mayes’ office considers the case against Gagic “fully closed,” stating that it was never submitted to a grand jury or referred to another agency. Mitchell had crapped out again.

But she could still count on the state bar.

Kangaroo court

The State Bar of Arizona has a long record of arbitrariness and a lack of transparency in its dealings with its members, among whom are some of the most powerful individuals in Arizona. 

Though the bar is a nonprofit institution that technically receives no public money, it is supervised by the Arizona Supreme Court, which is funded by Arizona taxpayers. Under a rule that took effect in January 2020, the Arizona Supreme Court effectively blocked public access to its members’ state bar files, except in certain narrow instances.

For example, the public can obtain no information on a bar complaint filed in 2022 against Mitchell and other top county prosecutors for allegedly suppressing evidence and other misconduct in the false prosecution of Nubia Rodriguez. The county attorney’s office — led by Mitchell’s predecessor at the time — charged Rodriguez with negligent homicide in the accidental 2019 traffic death of a Phoenix police officer, who jaywalked in front of her vehicle. Two judges dismissed the charge against Rodriguez for prosecutorial wrongdoing.

If the bar did more than a cursory review of the complaint before square-filing it, the public will never know. In response to an inquiry from New Times, bar spokesperson Danny Shapiro would only say that “the charges were closed and have no public disposition,” adding that per the bar’s rules, “there are no public records available.”

The bar’s one-sided rules were in full effect at Gagic’s April 15 hearing before Lisa VandenBerg, the Arizona Supreme Court’s presiding disciplinary judge, and two other panel members. VandenBerg had previously ruled that Gagic could not subpoena Mitchell because VandenBerg considered her a “non-party” to the case. Subsequently, Gagic refused to comply with a subpoena to be deposed by the state bar senior counsel Craig Henley prior to the hearing. 

As a result, at the beginning of the nearly two-hour hearing, VandenBerg declared that Gagic “will not be permitted to testify” but would be able to “present argument” regarding the “aggravation and mitigation” of the sanctions he would face as a result of his disobedience. Gagic responded with an ironic “Hallelujah.”

Henley spoke first, painting the already-suspended attorney as the second coming of Voldemort, accusing him of a “relentless quest to impugn the integrity of the judiciary and the judicial system.” Gagic had maligned a number of judges, Henley averred, giving numerous examples. Worse still, Gagic possessed as a “self-serving interest” his intention to “burden the sitting county attorney and her husband.”

Gagic had been “obstructionist” during the two-year process leading to the hearing before VandenBerg, Henley said. He had “consistently refused to comply with the court orders and discipline rules in this case,” which had “erode(d) the public’s confidence in the rule of law and the orderly system of justice.” A pretty robust allegation against a guy with less than 1,000 followers on X. 

Henley stumbled when he accused Gagic of “multiple threats and expletive-laced emails to the state bar.” Gagic called that out as “a lie,” prompting Henley to read aloud an email in which Gagic wrote that “I can’t wait for all your kids to find out you are all a bunch of fucking cowards and traitors.” Profane, sure. Threatening?

Despite the supposed ban on him testifying, Gagic got in his licks in, repeatedly interrupting to the point that VandenBerg threatened to kick him out. Gagic nonetheless buffaloed his way through the hearing, making points that were sometimes off topic and other times spot on.

“Why is the State Bar of Arizona OK with the county attorney using her husband to troll her critics?” Gagic asked during the proceeding. “That’s what I would like to know.”

Gagic continued, driving home the point.

“I would think a county attorney should maybe have thicker skin, should maybe just, I don’t know, ignore me,” he said. “If she just ignored me, if Mitchell just ignored me, I would quit Twitter after two weeks because what’s the fun in that? There is no fun. There’s no point to it if I’m just being ignored. But she created this. Why is the county attorney ordering a defense attorney disbarred for criticizing on Twitter? Why isn’t that kind of problematic?”

In fact, Mitchell’s unhinged pursuit of an admittedly offensive troll has only elevated Gagic’s fat jokes and problematic innuendo, giving them a far wider audience than if Mitchell and Stout had simply looked the other way. By doubling down at every turn, the couple created a trail of public documents that illustrate a prolonged example of what is commonly referred to as the Streisand effect. For Mitchell, it could also be viewed as an abuse of her authority as a prosecutor, one in which the state bar is complicit.

Following his notice of disbarment, the bar hit Gagic with a bill for more than $4,400 for the costs of the proceedings against him. His previous suspension garnered a similar bill for $6,000, according to the state bar’s website. He compared the invoice to the “bullet fee” the Chinese communists reputedly applied to the families of executed prisoners. 

Gagic also doesn’t think Mitchell is done with him.