(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) The leftist tag team of installed Arizona Democrat Gov. Katie Hobbs and her radical attorney general is coming under fire from multiple county prosecutors in the state over the duo’s power grab to shield killers of unborn babies from prosecution.
Hobbs signed an executive order last month that gave Attorney General Kris Mayes centralized and complete authority on whether to enforce the state’s abortion laws, including a 15-week abortion ban, stripping county prosecutors of their ability to make those decisions.
Mayes made clear last week that she would continue refusing to enforce laws that she opposed, but insisted she wasn’t decriminalizing anything with her refusal to prosecute.
“I don’t know that I accept your terminology,” Mayes said in reaction to a question from Capital Media Services about the Hobbs administration’s efforts to decriminalize abortions. “But I have been clear that we are not going to prosecute doctors and women in the state of Arizona for abortion, period.”
The intransigent position, shared by Hobbs, has drawn fierce criticism from all but three of the state’s county attorneys, who on Monday filed a request for the governor to rescind her executive order, arguing that it negates their authority over criminal prosecutions, AZ Central reported.
“The governor’s office should not interfere with the discretion of prosecutors in fulfilling their duties as elected officials,” the letter stated. “Whether this was the intended purpose, the result is an unnecessary and unjustified impingement on the duties and obligations of elected county attorneys in Arizona.”
In addition to usurping their authority and discretion to prosecute crimes, the county attorneys also warned that Hobbs’s executive order and AG Mayes’s authoritarian actions set a dangerous precedent.
“This executive order results in an exercise of authority not vested in the governor’s office. It is a substantial overreach to suggest the governor may strip away prosecutorial discretion from local, elected officials,” wrote Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell, one of the dozen county attorneys opposed to the order.
The sentiment echoed Mitchell’s previous criticism of Hobbs’s order, which she called a “procedural manipulation” designed to thwart county prosecutors’s authority.
“Our current governor took an entire category of potential offenses and is attempting to prevent locally elected county attorneys from reviewing and making charging decisions in those matters,” she said, according to Arizona radio KJZZ.
In their letter to Hobbs, the county attorneys requested the governor take action by July 7 to rescind the order.
Hobbs delivered a smackdown response through a spokesperson, declaring the governor had no intention of allowing county attorneys to make their own charging decisions.
“Governor Hobbs will never stop fighting for reproductive freedoms in Arizona,” declared Communications Director Christian Slater. “She will continue to use her lawful executive authority to put sanity over chaos and protect everyday Arizonans from extremists who are threatening to prosecute women and doctors over reproductive healthcare.”
