PHOENIX — An attorney who has been representing Kari Lake in her attempts to overturn the election returns is admitting that he may not have been up to the job.
In a letter to the State Bar of Arizona, Bryan Blehm said Lake’s legal bid “should have been handled by a much larger law firm with resources.’’
But Blehm said many attorneys are loath to take on the legal system — as he said he has done with issues related to elections — for fear of running afoul of and being punished by the courts.
“We implicitly deny individuals full access to our judicial system as finding suitable counsel can be difficult if not impossible,’’ he wrote.
The bottom line, Blehm said, Lake “was left represented by a small sole proprietor with few to no resources.’’
All this comes in response to the State Bar opening a complaint against him as well as one against Kurt Olsen who has been his co-counsel in the multi-year litigation over the 2022 gubernatorial race.
What is in the actual State Bar complaint against Blehm has not been disclosed, as the organization that regulates attorney conduct has a policy of keeping such matters confidential while they are under investigation.
There are two open charges against Olsen “related to his conduct in the election challenge,’’ said Taylor Tasler, a spokesperson for the group. There is a similar one against Blehm.
But she acknowledged Blehm also faces a complaint over “public posting concerning the Arizona Supreme Court.’’
And that has to do with Blehm’s multiple statements, in social media posts, that the judiciary has been involved, at least indirectly, in hiding election fraud and even in overthrowing the Trump presidency in the 2020 election.
The State Bar complaints come even as Blehm and Olsen continue their legal effort to overturn the results of the 2022 election which found that Lake lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs by more than 17,000.
In their latest filing just this week, the pair reiterated their claims that Maricopa County did not follow legal procedures in conducting the election.
And they told the Court of Appeals that the proper remedy is to nullify the results from the county and conduct a new trial.
Neither returned calls and messages seeking comment.
The remarks about the kind of counsel Lake was able to obtain came in a Nov. 6 letter to the State Bar Attorney Discipline Probable Cause Committee.
First obtained by the Arizona Mirror, Blehm said in the letter he believes he is being targeted because of a post on X, formerly Twitter, where he said the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Department of Justice induced the Arizona Supreme Court and other state judicial system “to create misinformation boards in the run up to the 2020 election.’’
That refers to the decision of Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Brutinel to form a Task Force on Countering Disinformation.
The idea was to provide responses to false claims that otherwise would go unanswered, undermining public confidence in the courts.”Whether foreign or domestic, Arizona’s courts must be prepared to address attempts to discredit the justice system through the use of disinformation,’’ Brutinel said in forming the task force.
Blehm, in his post, had a different explanation.
“The answer is simple, they were conspiring to do what they had been doing to other countries for decades, to overthrow the government of the United States of America and once they executed their plan, which they did, they needed to control the media and judicial narrative to convince the public that all was well,’’ he wrote.
And Blehm said that if the Supreme Court and the Bar, as its “enforcement arm,’’ formed committees to control misinformation, “it tames attorneys’ willingness to bring election fraud claims on behalf of their clients.”
In his first response to the Bar in August, Blehm denied an allegation of engaging in unprofessional conduct.”This tweet was not made in connection with any specific case though I do have them,’’ he wrote. “This tweet was made to begin a public policy debate, now that we can freely do so on X (Twitter) without fear of reprisals sanctioned and sponsored by those same national security institutions responsible for Arizona’s creation of a disinformation board.’’
Blehm also said his post did not call into question the qualifications or integrity of any judge. “My tweet was intended to say that the Arizona judiciary was hoodwinked by the national security apparatus specifically to limit attorney speech and willingness to bring valid claims on behalf of their clients,’’ he told the Bar.
He also denied allegations he engaged in conduct “prejudicial to the administration of justice,’’ saying his post was to improve the administration of justice “to ensure that contemporary McCarthyism does not take a solid foothold.’’
Blehm said debate can improve the justice system.
“This is especially true when courts take it upon themselves to censor speech absent an actual case or controversy,’’ he wrote.”Our courts should never, absent a case or controversy, be engaged in boards that have the effect of censoring speech, especially political speech,’’ Blehm continued. “Doing so with the bar association’s active participation serves to quash attorney willingness to fully represent their clients on significant issues involving our elections.’’
It was in the more recent post this month that Blehm made his comments about how Lake’s challenge to the election should have been handled by a larger law firm.
And he blamed it on other attorneys being afraid of taking such a case.”When attorneys fear raising specific issues before our courts because they do not want to make this appearance (in court), we implicitly deny individuals full access to our judicial system as finding suitable counsel can be difficult,’’ he wrote.
And Blehm said the investigation against him should be terminated.
This isn’t the first legal brush of Blehm and Olsen with the courts.
Earlier this year, the Arizona Supreme Court slapped the two attorneys with a $2,000 sanction after they claimed that the record “indisputably’’ reflects that there were at least 35,563 early ballots injected into the system. Brutinel said that was a lie.
