PHOENIX — Last Friday, the Phoenix federal judge presiding over the criminal trial against the former owners of Backpage.com issued a 14-page ruling that detailed her refusal to recuse herself from the case, following a motion by the defendants that revealed her husband’s explicit activism against them as part of a crusade alleging “human trafficking.”
Last month, as XBIZ reported, the defense for former Backpage.com owners Michael Lacey and James Larkin requested that U.S. District Court in Arizona Judge Susan Brnovich recuse herself over public statements made by her husband, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a vocal activist against what he calls “human trafficking,” which includes a lurid pamphlet published by his office.
Lacey and Larkin’s attorneys filed a motion 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.
With the wording of Friday’s ruling, Judge Brnovich is not only refusing to step down, but also strongly denies that her impartiality is compromised by her husband’s advocacy and direct targeting of the defendants as a source of “human trafficking.”
A Judge Self-Convinced of Impartiality
According to the Arizona Capitol Times’ report on the ruling, Judge Brnovich “did not dispute that her husband’s office had published a booklet about sex trafficking which specifically mentioned [Backpage.com].”
The judge questioned the timing of the defendants’ filing, which as the Capitol Times pointed out, “comes nearly a year and a half after she inherited the case from other federal judges, and after she already made some rulings against the defendants.”
The recusal filing had mentioned that the defendants had become aware of the existence of Arizona’s AG Mark Brnovich’s tawdry “anti-trafficking” 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.
Brnovich dismissed the story of the discovery as “unbelievable,” adding that articles since 2015 had mentioned who her husband was, and his vocal activism about issues that could affect his wife’s impartiality.
“Thus, knowing the Court was married to the attorney general of Arizona and knowing that state attorneys general have been scrutinizing Backpage for years,” wrote Judge Brnovich, “it is not credible to claim defendants knew nothing of AG Brnovich’s position on human trafficking.”
Besides questioning the timing, Brnovich also “brushed aside one claim which said that judges are required to recuse themselves if they or family members have any interest in the outcome of the proceeding,” reported the Capitol Times. “The judge said that is generally considered a financial interest.”
Judge Brnovich also dismissed the suggestion “that the outcome of the case will impact her husband’s ability to raise future campaign funds.”
The judge also refused to consider the defendants’ find that AG Mark Brnovich had signed a letter with other attorneys general pre-condemning Backpage as a business, although without mentioning Lacey and Larkin.
Although she admitted the existence of the letter, she quibbled that her husband’s letter, sent before the indictments, “made no mention of the defendants before the court.”
Switching to the third person to declare her lack of bias to her own satisfaction, Judge Susan Brnovich concluded that “in short, the court will remain impartial in this matter, and no reasonable person fully informed of the facts would question the court’s impartiality based on the court’s marriage to AG Brnovich."
Lacey Responds
Today Lacey responded to the judge’s decision in an editorial through FrontPageConfidential.com, which is published by himself and Larkin and edited by Stephen Lemons, and is the last journalistic remnant of their once-powerful company, Village Voice Media.
Written in Lacey’s patented style — a mixture of florid prose, historical comparisons and gleeful, “stick-it-to-the-man” verve — the editorial is titled “A Tourette’s Quinceanera.”
“It is difficult, for sheer outrage, to rival the French Revolutionary Tribunal where Georges Danton instructed the courthouse functionaries: 'Let us be terrible, so that the people do not have to be,'" Lacey begins.
“His savage directive lives yet to this very day.”
“Once again we are seeing bloody justice, this time in the Phoenix Federal Courthouse.”
Lacey notes that while “previously Judge Douglas Rayes disqualified himself because he had a friendly relationship with attorneys on both sides of this case, […] Judge Susan, on the other hand, is sleeping with General Mark.”
“She sees no problem. Au contraire, mon amie.”
Lacey correctly points out that AG Mark Brnovich published his “anti-trafficking” pamphlet two months after their arrest.
“Let me repeat myself,” he writes, “Mark Brnovich published an incendiary — and wildly inaccurate — propaganda booklet attacking Backpage, the classified advertising platform, in 2018.”
“Less than a year later, in 2019, his wife Susan agreed to take charge as the judge in the prosecution” of Lacey and Larkin.
“The defendants then are left to ponder the pillow talk between these interlocutors,” Lacey continues. “Or their conversations at Starbucks.”
“To be quite clear,” Lacey writes, “Attorney General Brnovich is not prosecuting the case in front of his wife. That task is performed by the US Attorney’s Office. But once the FBI raided our homes and put us in prison, Attorney General Brnovich made sure he took his turn at our busted piñata.”
“And once he got his very public whacks in and made sure that that voters understood that he, too, was a part of this hysterical moral panic, only then did his wife choose to decide if she would sit in judgment of us, oversee jury selection and sentence us,” Lacey adds.
“Her decision: she would.”
The trial, originally scheduled for May 2020, had first been postponed by Judge Brnovich in February until August 17, and then in July to January 2021, due to concerns regarding the COVID-19 health crisis in the state.
Earlier this month, the judge granted another motion by the defense to move the trial date, this time to April 2021, which will coincide with the third anniversary of Lacey and Larkin’s arrest and assets seizure
For more of XBIZ's coverage of the Backpage.com trial, click here.
Main Image: The Brnovichs, Arizona's legal power couple.