UPDATE, 3:50pm: The State Senate had generally budgeted only $397,000/yr for outside legal services before the past fiscal year. They bumped that up to $704,900, a 77% increase. They may even have gone over that amount - although they may have used some maneuvers to avoid an overage.
We reported earlier this week on the rare trifecta achieved by State Senate President Karen Fann - having the same legal case simultaneously active in the Superior Court, the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court. The legal bills for the recent ping-ponging appeals and depositions are not yet known.
However, Arizona taxpayers coughed up more than $550,000 last year to pay for the State Senate's legal bills related to their subpoenas, the election "audit", and the ongoing failure to respond to public records requests. More than $505,000 of that went to the two-person law firm made up of Kory Langhofer and Tom Basile.
Statecraft - which also received more than $56,000 from the Republican National Committee in 2021 - accepted payments from the state irregularly throughout the year, but received a whopping check for $259,946.49 on November 30.
In addition, the State Senate paid attorney Alex Kolodin $33,295 for "legal services", and Cyber Ninjas' attorney Jack Wilenchik $17,004, both in October 2021. Although not necessarily for legal services related to the "audit", the Senate also paid attorney Bill Richards' firm more than $100,000. (The Senate has retained Richards in the years prior to the 2020 elections.)
(A sidenote: although you cannot see it in the screenshots above, the 2020-21 payments to Langhofer are attributed to four different budget years between 2018 and 2022. Perhaps state budget experts can explain this.)
This article was reported by AZ Law founder Paul Weich. Paul is currently running for a seat in Arizona's House of Representatives.
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Simply stated, she did it exclusively because SHE COULD. State agencies have to comply with appropriation legislation, but the Senate and House make their own rules.
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