PHOENIX — Gov. Katie Hobbs has declined to answer questions about a legal fund revealed during the investigation into pay-for-play allegations involving a state contractor.
“Everything that's required to be reported, we have reported,” she told reporters Sunday.
Hobbs is not required to disclose who has donated to the legal fund, which is controlled by her inaugural fund.
Sunshine Residential Homes, a group-home operator that has a contract with the Department of Child Safety, donated to both the inaugural fund and the Arizona Democratic Party. The company received a 30% rate hike several months after the governor took office.
Attorney General Kris Mayes cleared Hobbs of wrongdoing after a two-year investigation, saying evidence did not support bribery charges.
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Mayes’ report also revealed Sunshine Residential had donated $150,000 to the legal fund, bringing the company’s total donations to the inaugural fund and the state Democratic Party to more than half a million dollars.
Hobbs on Sunday refused to answer reporter questions about who else had donated to the fund, pointing to a letter her campaign sent to Mayes.
“I'm not going to get into this with you. I said what I said,” she said. “You can go to the letter. We've reported everything that's required to be reported.”
Hobbs did not sit for an interview with Mayes’ investigators. Instead, her campaign and the Governor’s Office sent separate letters addressing the attorney general’s questions. Her campaign’s letter revealed Sunshine Residential made three donations of $50,000 to the legal fund but did not disclose any other donors.
“Look, the reason we have a legal defense fund is because people like Kari Lake and now my opponent, Andy Biggs, refuse to acknowledge the results of elections, including 2020 and 2022,” she told ABC15. “And as long as they're going to continue working to undermine the will of the voters, we have no idea what's in store for 2026. I'm going to continue to use every tool at my disposal to defend that, and that's what we're doing.”
Arizona House speaker questions Mayes' investigation
Meanwhile, Republican state lawmakers are demanding answers about the attorney general’s investigation.
House Speaker Steve Montenegro said Mayes’ report does not address allegations from former DCS Director Michael Faust, who told House investigators Sunshine Residential's Simon Kottoor told him he would recommend Hobbs keep Faust on as the agency leader if he approved the company’s rate hike.
“Those failures raise the specter that your Memorandum was intended to influence the November election by attempting to inoculate the Governor from a perceived political vulnerability,” Montenegro wrote in an Aug. 27 letter to Mayes.
Both Mayes and Hobbs are up for reelection in November.
Montenegro asked the attorney general to provide written answers to five questions about the investigation by Friday.
“The Memorandum suggests that your Office failed to pursue critical issues and reached conclusions that directly conflict with reliable evidence – including information provided by the very witnesses your Office claims to have interviewed,” he wrote.
In a statement, Mayes’ spokesperson told ABC15 Kottoor and Faust made contradictory allegations when they talked with the AG’s investigators that weren’t supported by evidence, calling them a “he said, he said” situation.
“Speaker Montenegro is cherry-picking evidence and leaking one-sided accounts of alleged events to push a partisan political narrative,” Richie Taylor said. “Doing so ignores the totality of the facts in this case and selectively omits other information that contradicts his assertions.”
The Arizona auditor general is also conducting an investigation into the matter. Taylor questioned why the Legislature was conducting its own probe.
“The more important question is, how much taxpayer money is the Legislature wasting paying a firm with partisan affiliations when Arizonans have already paid for the Attorney General and the Legislature's own Auditor General to investigate these same matters?” he said.
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