PHOENIX — The FBI is investigating former state utility regulator Gary Pierce over election issues related to the 2014 bid by his son, Justin Pierce, for secretary of state.
The elder Pierce confirmed late Friday to Capitol Media Services that two agents showed up at his house earlier in the day with many questions. Pierce said their focus was that 2014 election, but said the federal agents asked him not to say more to others.
He described the conversation as “cordial.”
At the same time, a spokesman for Pinnacle West Capital Corp., Jim McDonald, said the U.S. Attorney’s Office had been in contact with that firm. Pinnacle West is the parent company of Arizona Public Service, the state’s largest electric utility.
McDonald said he did not know who at the utility had been interviewed.
And a spokeswoman for the Arizona Corporation Commission said that agency had been contacted by the FBI and was “cooperating fully.”
The federal probe appears to be an outgrowth of an investigation originally started at the state Attorney General’s Office.
That included allegations that Pierce, while a regulator, had met secretly with Don Brandt, the chief executive officer of APS, and Don Robinson, his predecessor, while the utility was in the middle of a rate case before the regulatory agency. These were laid out in a letter from a whistleblower, later identified as a former commission staffer, to Attorney General Mark Brnovich and others.
That state investigation also was looking into the role that Scot Mussi, head of the Free Enterprise Club, played in the 2014 Republican primary race for secretary of state. Mussi’s organization spent more than $500,000 on behalf of the younger Pierce, who lost the primary election to Michele Reagan.
Wil Cardon, the third candidate in that campaign, charged during the race that the elder Pierce was using his position on the commission to get financial support for Justin Pierce’s campaign from companies that are regulated by the panel.
Both father and son denied the allegations.
Gary Pierce said Friday he’s not worried. “I’ve not done anything wrong,” he said.
He is not faulting federal officials for pursuing the issue. “I think they’re just trying to get at the truth,” he said. “They don’t know whether to believe me or not to believe me.”
But Pierce said he suspects much of the inquiry is “politically driven.”
Pierce, a former lawmaker, was first elected to the commission in 2006 and re-elected four years later before retiring in 2014.
