Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump waves to the crowd after speaking at a campaign event at the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024, in Tucson, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin).
The judge overseeing the Arizona fake electors case recused himself late Tuesday night in response to a defense request over emails in which he urged his colleagues on the bench to defend Vice President Kamala Harris against political attacks.
As Law&Crime previously reported, defense attorneys recently asked Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Bruce Cohen to disqualify himself after the media reported on a series of emails sent in August in which he expressed umbrage at race- and gender-based criticism of the since-failed Democratic Party presidential candidate.
A hearing was slated for Wednesday to address the motion to disqualify but has since been rendered moot.
“It is within Judge Cohen’s discretion to recuse himself,” a spokesperson for the Arizona Attorney General’s Office told Law&Crime in an email when asked to comment on the matter.
“As Judge Cohen stated in his minute entry, his email to the judiciary was ‘not reflective of bias,’ but rather a ‘cry for decency and respect,”” the statement from communications director Richie Taylor went on. “However, the tone and rhetoric used in motions recently submitted by defense counsel to attack Arizona’s chief legal officer and now the independent judiciary are beyond the pale.”
Last week, Cohen offered some choice words to his judicial colleagues in response to perceived slights against the since-failed Democratic Party presidential candidate. The judge singled out other white and male jurists.
The emails were obtained and reported on by The Arizona Daily Independent late last week.
One relevant passage reads:
It does matter if your chromosomes are made up of ‘XY.’ It matters even more if your skin color is characterized as ‘white’ or Caucasian. We must speak out. We must tell those within our circles of influence that this s**t must stop. NOW! We cannot allow our female colleagues to feel as if they stand alone when there are those who may intimate that their ascension was anything other than based upon exceptionalism. We cannot allow our colleagues who identify as being a ‘person of color’ to stand alone when there are those may claim that their ascension was an ‘equity hire’ rather than based solely upon exceptionalism.
In another passage, Cohen likened the post-2024 election political milieu to that of Nazi totalitarianism.
“I have been reflecting on Martin Niemoller’s brilliant post-WWII essay known as ‘First they came for …’ While the subject matter of his commentary was one of the most horrific periods in world history, its instruction applies equally to present day events,” the judge wrote. “When we cannot or do not stand with others, the words of Martin Niemoller are no longer a historic reference to the atrocities of WWII, those words describe the present.”
In the quickly successful motion to disqualify, Arizona state Sen. Jake Hoffman said Cohen must remove himself.
“Those statements compare Republicans to Nazis and urged members of the bench to defend Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for President in last week’s election,” attorneys David Warrington and Michael Columbo wrote. “While Judge Cohen is entitled to his political opinions and speech, his rhetoric and exhortation precisely mirrors the evidence of hostile partisan political zealotry at the heart of the motions to dismiss that have been languishing before the Court for months.”
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To hear the defense tell it, Cohen’s missives were of a piece with statements made by a prosecutor who compared “Republicans to Nazis and the Defendants in this case to Vladimir Putin.”
The motion also contained a laundry list of offending words and phrases the judge allegedly used to describe Trump, his running mate JD Vance, and some of their political rhetoric.
Those words and phrases include:
“sickened,”
“deplorable,”
“blood boiled,”
“depravity,”
“this s–––,”
“NOT RIGHT,” and
“horrific.”
In an email sent the day after the original email, Cohen apologized for using a mass judicial distribution list as his “forum.”
The defense credited that apology as genuine — but argued the judge had likely demonstrated an actual bias against Trump and his supporters and, in any event, an “appearance of partiality.”
“Judge Cohen bears a deep-seated personal political bias that overcame his professional judgment,” the motion to disqualify goes on, “[H]e was willing to use the privileges of his office to oppose his perceived political adversaries, which would naturally include the Defendants.”
The “utter contempt” evidenced by the court for the 45th and 47th president was particularly troubling because Hoffman “is on trial for exercising his First Amendment rights as a supporter of President Trump” and therefore he “cannot receive a fair trial,” the defense argued.
“President Trump is not just a political figure whom Senator Hoffman supports,” the motion to disqualify continues. “He is designated as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Indictment. 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.”
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Hoffman and 17 other co-defendants were named in a six-count indictment handed up by grand jurors in late April.
Prosecutors allege multiple felonies were committed in service of a failed effort — by many of Trump’s closest allies, advisers and stalwarts — to submit a slate of fake, or “alternate,” electors who were prepared to deny President Joe Biden the Electoral College votes he won in the state during the 2020 election. Similar efforts took place in multiple states where Trump lost in 2020 by solid but narrow margins.
The Grand Canyon State’s criminal case was one of multiple attempts by Democratic Party prosecutors to use the law against people within Trump’s orbit over election subversion efforts.
Many such cases — particularly those involving Trump himself — have since fallen by the wayside.
Prosecutors, for their part, have vowed to push forward with the fake electors case.
“This case has never been motivated by politics — it is rooted solely in pursuing justice and upholding the rule of law,” the AG’s office statement goes on. “After a careful review of the evidence, an independent grand jury issued these indictments. The baseless accusations and inflammatory language used by defense counsel undermine the integrity of the legal process and distract from the facts of this case.”
The case is currently slated to go to trial on Jan. 5, 2026. And, though quite a long way off as it is, the judge’s recusal could foreseeably result in further delays.
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