by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy, Arizona Mirror
January 10, 2024
An attorney who represented former Republican lawmaker Mark Finchem in an election contest that baselessly claimed fraud has been sanctioned and ordered to retire for at least one year.
Cave Creek attorney Daniel McCauley, a lawyer with no experience in election law, represented the former Oro Valley legislator in contesting Finchem’s election loss. He and Finchem claimed that Adrian Fontes, who defeated Finchem in the 2022 Secretary of State race, only won because of election malfeasance at the hands of Maricopa County and then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs.
However, the two men provided no evidence that anything affected the outcome of the election.
Last year, after the case was heard and dismissed, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Melissa Julian deemed that the suit was brought in bad faith and allowed for sanctions to be pursued against both Finchem and McCauley. In her ruling, Julian cited comments made by Finchem and McCauley during proceedings.
“I took this (case) because they needed somebody to do this,” McCauley said during one hearing. “I guess it does not matter if I get sanctioned here. I’m 75, semi-retired, and it will be two years or so before they get to it.”
Julian noted that McCauley’s comment showed that he had “some awareness that this case lacked merit” as “he expressed being less at risk of being disbarred as a result of the filing given his impending retirement.”
McCauley’s statement also supported Julian’s decision to allow sanctions, as it demonstrated “a conscious decision to pursue the matter despite appreciating that the contest had no legal merit.”
The Arizona State Bar on Jan. 9 issued an order stating that McCauley is suspended from practicing law for 30 days and must change his State Bar membership status to “retired” for at least one year. McCauley was also ordered to pay the State Bar $1,200 for costs incurred by the State Bar for the proceedings. McCauley must pay the money within 30 days.
The State Bar found that McCauley violated the rules of professional conduct that bind attorneys in the state, and cited part of the standards which state that “suspension is generally appropriate when a lawyer engages in an area of practice (which) the lawyer knows he or she is not competent, and causes injury or potential injury to a client.”
The Bar further stated that McCauley “knowingly” violated this and caused actual harm.
Finchem lost his election by about five percentage points, more than 120,000 votes, but he still asked the courts to overturn the result, order a statewide hand-recount of all ballots and force the attorney general to investigate Hobbs for what he claimed was self-dealing and threatening public officials.
McCauley did not respond to a request for comment from the Arizona Mirror.
This is not the first time Finchem or attorneys connected to “election fraud” claims has been sanctioned for an election lawsuit. Finchem was sanctioned in federal court alongside former gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake for a lawsuit that aimed to ban the use of electronic tabulation machines in the state in favor of a hand count.
Lawmaker and attorney Alexander Kolodin, R-Scottsdale, is also facing disciplinary action from the “Kraken suit” he brought in Arizona.
Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.
