PHOENIX — Lawyers for the former owners of adult classified website Backpage.com have requested that Judge Susan Brnovich recuse herself from their ongoing trial over public statements made by her husband, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a vocal activist against what he calls “human trafficking,” including a lurid pamphlet published by his office.
Backpage.com founders Michael Lacey and James Larkin, through their defense attorneys, filed a motion on Wednesday bringing attention to Mark Brnovich’s statements and pamphlet, claiming they “create a situation where the court’s impartiality could be questioned,” according to an Associated Press report.
Back in July, Judge Brnovich granted a motion by the defense to move the trial date to January 2021, due to concerns regarding the COVID-19 health crisis in the state. The trial, originally scheduled for May 2020, had last been postponed in February until August 17.
Lacey, Larkin and others are accused by the government of a number of alleged crimes over their ownership of the popular adult-oriented classifieds website.
Backpage.com was shuttered and seized by federal authorities in 2018. They accused the company of “participation in a conspiracy to facilitate and promote prostitution,” and also of money laundering, human trafficking and other charges.
An 'Anti-Trafficking' Crusader
In Wednesday’s filing, the defense noted Mark Brnovich’s explicitly biased language and vocal anti-trafficking crusading, claiming that the Arizona’s AG controversial campaign — which includes the sensationalistic 2017 pamphlet “Human Trafficking: Arizona’s Not Buying It,” with a cover portraying a stock photo of a very young woman wearing a skimpy top and leaning into the window of a car — calls into question his wife’s impartiality.
“He has publicly claimed that Backpage.com facilitated illegal prostitution — the issue at the core of this case,” wrote the defense lawyers, who, according to AP, said they discovered the pamphlet two weeks ago.
“He also has publicly claimed Backpage.com facilitated sex trafficking and called on Congress to change federal law so he himself would not be barred from prosecuting Backpage.com and/or defendants,” Lacey and Larkin’s lawyers noted. “He has publicly aligned himself with others who have publicly made similar claims.”
The request for Judge Brnovich to recuse herself, the AP added, “also said the attorney general has invited members of the public to visit websites that contain inflammatory information about Backpage and its operators.”
The state attorney general’s office declined to comment to AP on the recusal request. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Phoenix, which is prosecuting Lacey, Larkin and four other former Backpage employees, also declined to comment to AP.
Brnovich’s Lurid, Sensationalistic Pamphlet
The cornerstone of the defense request is the Arizona Attorney General’s propaganda pamphlet “Human Trafficking: Arizona’s Not Buying it,” which is currently available as a .pdf from a government website.
The cover of the pamphlet displays the aforementioned stock photo of a young woman and is prominently emblazoned with the seal of the Attorney Attorney General and with the name “Mark Brnovich” in bold white font.
The pamphlet begins with an introduction titled “Letter From Mark” (sic) where the AG and husband of the federal judge in charge of Backpage’s prosecution writes the following alarmist statement:
“One of the most dangerous and growing threats to children in Arizona is Human Trafficking. Often, when we hear about these types of horrific crimes we think that it could never happen to our family, but it is imperative to understand that Human Trafficking is occurring right here in our communities. Predators are developing new tactics to recruit children online, in our neighborhoods, and at our schools”
The first line in Mark Brnovich’s letter is not corroborated by facts: according to the latest yearly official report on Arizona crime (from 2018), there were zero human trafficking cases reported on average every 24 hours during that year. To compare it, every 24 hours Arizonans reported one murder, four arsons, nine rapes, 49 motor vehicle thefts and 82 burglaries.
A professional studio-shot, chiaroscuro photo of Mark Brnovich half-smiling to the camera on a dark background illustrates this “Letter From Mark.”
Salacious Stock Photos, Prejudice and Murky Stats
Mark Brnovich’s pamphlet continues with this tone, drumming up an ill-defined, ominous “human trafficking” panic.
The most damning challenge to Judge Brnovich’s impartiality is page 22 of her husband’s propaganda pamphlet, which reads:
Where does it happen?
Traffickers, also known as pimps, recruit their victims through a variety of means, including:
Social media: websites such as Facebook, Backpage, and chatrooms
Places: shopping malls, bus stops, school, after school events, and basically anywhere that teens frequent
Backpage.com: an online classified advertising site used frequently to purchase sex, is listed as a privately held Arizona corporation, with headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona.
78,000 men in Phoenix are online sex ad customers.
Over 300 ads are placed each day in Phoenix on Backpage.com for adult services – with an estimated 20% for girls under 18.
The pamphlet makes ample use of terrifying stock images throughout, including one of an adult hand covering the mouth of a woman, which has been tinted red.
Another stock photo of a woman wearing a pink jacket, her legs suggestively wrapped in ripped stockings, includes the non-sequitur caption, “There are approximately 78,000 male online sex customers in Phoenix.”
Brnovich’s prejudicial pamphlet constantly conflates consensual sex work between adults, which is not and has been never part of the definition of “human trafficking,” with “sex trafficking.”
The claim of “approximately 78,000 male online sex customers in Phoenix" is both too vague and too specific, to the point of being unverifiable, and reinforces the prejudicial narrative — pushed by activists who are against all sex workers and sex work — that commercial sex is always an instance of a cis woman selling sex to a cis man.
The vast majority of the photos chosen by Brnovich’s for the pamphlet depict what appear to be young white women, although records of actual sex trafficking indicate that BIPOC and LGBTQ+ people, including cis men, trans and non-binary people, constitute a vast number of the victims.
For more of XBIZ's coverage of the Backpage.com trial, click here.