Kris Mayes hits Warren Petersen for campaigning alongside an activist she indicted for fraud

Republican candidate for Attorney General Warren Petersen has been campaigning with an man that Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes is prosecuting for fraud. 

Phoenix civil rights activist Rev. Jarrett Maupin was indicted earlier this year on nine felony counts that include allegations of check fraud dating back to 2022. Maupin, who in the past has spoken out about police violence, has been pushing for the Arizona GOP’s slate of candidates including Petersen, who recently attended service and spoke at a Black church with Maupin. 

Maupin is the latest target of Mayes’ office who is backing Petersen and working to oust her from office. Several companies being sued or prosecuted by the Attorney General’s Office have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to boost Petersen’s campaign including a trailer park management company that Mayes, and other state AGs, is currently suing over poor conditions at their parks. 

The Mayes campaign attacked Petersen for his ties to Maupin.

“Warren Petersen is asking Arizonans to trust him as their next Attorney General while campaigning alongside an indicted fraudster and taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from companies Attorney General Mayes is holding accountable,” the campaign said in a statement to the Arizona Mirror. “That tells you everything you need to know about whose side Warren Petersen would be on. Kris Mayes works for the people of Arizona. Warren Petersen is showing us who he works for.”

Petersen’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. 

In a lengthy statement to the Mirror, Maupin claimed he has never spoken with Petersen about the criminal case Mayes is pursuing against him and said he supported Petersen prior to the indictment. He also called the indictment an “attempted political proscription.” 

“I have lent my support to Senate President Warren Petersen from a date well antecedent to the public unveiling of Attorney General Mayes’s lawfare against me, which arrived in the form of an indictment,” Maupin said. “In the judgment of not a few observers, that proceeding was conceived less as an exercise in justice than as an instrument of electoral interference, designed to hobble first my inquiry into a congressional race and thereafter my candidacy for the Phoenix City Council, a contest in which my name now appears upon the ballot. I decline to dignify a spurious case or to amuse myself with a humbug indictment.”

Maupin also stated that he anticipates a pardon from President Donald Trump, compared Mayes to New York Attorney General Letitia James, who prosecuted Trump for fraudulently inflating his net worth on financial documents, and said that he purposefully hired Mayes’ opponent from her 2022 Democratic primary to represent him in the fraud case. 

“The inconvenience for her is that I am innocent. That is why I retained her former primary opponent to represent me,” Maupin said. “Whoever would insinuate the contrary ought to affix a name to the charge and cease to operate from behind the sheet. God bless our Golden Ticket statewide slate, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and President Donald Trump.” 

This isn’t Maupin’s first run in with legal trouble. 

In 2008, Maupin accused then-Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon of having sex with a minor and prompted an investigation by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. Gordon and Sheriff Joe Arpaio had been feuding at the time, and Maupin was an ally of Arpaio’s. 

After investigators found no evidence to back up Maupin’s claims, he eventually confessed to fabricating the story and was charged with a misdemeanor, which was later dropped. In 2009, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted him for telling the same lies to the FBI; he ultimately  pleaded guilty and was given probation. Later, he served a month in prison after having his probation revoked. Maupin has blamed the person who he said gave him the information. 

Maupin has also been accused of asking victims of police violence for cash for his advocacy, and an investigation by The Arizona Republic found that some victims never saw that advocacy.