After a criminal defense lawyer in the Arizona election interference case obtained the emails of the presiding judge through a public records request, the judge stepped down from the case over claims that he expressed political opposition to Donald Trump and implicitly compared the defendants to Adolf Hitler supporters, Courthouse News reports. Maricopa County Judge Bruce Cohen granted a recusal motion after a lawyer for Arizona state Sen. Jake Hoffman called out Cohen for an email to his colleagues to stand up to misogyny trumpeted by Trump and his supporters. "The utter contempt Judge Cohen displayed against President Trump in his Aug. 29 email makes it clear that Senator Hoffman — who is on trial for exercising his First Amendment rights as a supporter of President Trump — cannot receive a fair trial before Judge Cohen,'' Michael Colombo of Dhillon law group wrote on Hoffman’s behalf in a Nov. 9 motion for recusal. The motion includes a copy of the mass email, which Cohen followed the next day with an apology for “allowing my passion to cloud my judgment.”
Hoffman, a Queen Creek Republican, faces nine counts of conspiracy, fraud and forgery for signing an official election document falsely assigning Arizona’s 11 electoral votes to Trump in 2020. Cohen defended his statement in an order filed Tuesday, but agreed to recuse himself to nullify any appearance of bias.
In the original email, Cohen encouraged fellow Maricopa Superior Court judges — particularly white men — to speak out against Trump’s claims, like Vice President Kamala Harris being a “DEI hire” and that she and Hillary Clinton used sex to rise the political ranks. Cohen invoked an essay by Martin Neimoller, who wrote about those who stayed silent during the rise of Nazis in Germany because it didn’t affect them. He said it was "time for me to state my piece or be complicit in the depravity.” Colombo obtained the email through a public records request filed by a Republican state lawmaker unrelated to the case. "Even if Judge Cohen can somehow separate his apparent detestation of President Trump from his adjudication of a case that centers around defendants' political activity in support of President Trump, the appearance of impropriety is a stain on this case that cannot be removed,” he wrote. Colombo also contends that the attorney general’s office is biased against his client and the 17 other defendants — the subject of multiple pending anti-SLAPP motions. He said Cohen has shown he could not fairly consider the effects that claims by Attorney General Kris Mayes and chief assistant Daniel Barr comparing Trump to Hitler would have on the fairness of the prosecution. Cohen, who didn’t stand for retention this year and will conclude his term in January, agreed to recuse himself, but doubled down on his message regarding the “significant percentage” of women and racial minorities that make up the county’s judiciary.
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