FOIAzona

I like to avoid “fact checks” on this blog. The media landscape in Arizona is so biased that correcting local journalists would become a full-time job, and no one has time for that. But there are a few issues so pervasively destructive to our state’s ability to operate that I feel a need to clear things up.

One of those issues currently in the news is the infamous “federal monitor,” an unelected bureaucrat named Robert Warshaw who has been conducting burdensome and endless “oversight” of Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) for more than a decade thanks to civil litigation lawfare during the Obama era.

It may be an esoteric issue on paper but it’s one that affects the day-to-day lives of Arizona families in a very real way by hindering MCSO’s ability to fight crime and imposing an astronomical cost (in both dollars and personnel time) on Maricopa County that taxpayers have to foot.

ABC 15 (KNXV-TV in Phoenix) has never been shy about its left-wing position on criminal justice reform or its reliance on allied political groups as sources. Over the past week, though, the TV station’s journalistic malpractice reached new heights and deserves to be addressed.

#1) MCSO Did Not File The Rule 60 Motion

ABC 15’s Dave Biscobing aired a segment on December 18 claiming that “MCSO wants that oversight to end, so they just filed a special motion in court.” The graphics on the screen are labeled “MCSO Motion.”

In reality, MCSO did not file anything. Records I obtained from U.S. District Court show that it is the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors (MCBOS) who filed the December 17 motion for relief, as seen in the document below:

MCBOS is an entirely different party in this case. The Board of Supervisors utilizes outside counsel from Greenberg Traurig, LLP, whereas the Sheriff’s Office uses outside counsel from Jones, Skelton & Hochuli, P.L.C., as seen in the December 18 filing docketed below on behalf of Sheriff Jerry Sheridan:

MCBOS Chairman Thomas Galvin even released a 90-second video ahead of time touting the “historic moment” that “the Board’s attorney filed a motion in federal court asking for relief.”

The fact that MCBOS filed the Rule 60 motion in this litigation is a significant distinction, as it controls Maricopa County’s finances and appropriates MCSO’s budget. A local TV station not understanding this speaks volumes about its coverage.

#2) The Monitor Has Cost Taxpayers $300M+

ABC 15 claimed during the same segment that “the Sheriff’s Office essentially got caught making up how much oversight was costing.” This is a reference to a dubious “audit” conducted by a friend of the monitor and promoted heavily by the ACLU, which supports his federal oversight and whose legal bills (it represents the plaintiffs) are funded by the county.

In reality, dealing with the monitor has cost taxpayers more than $300 million. It’s indisputable.

County Attorney Rachel Mitchell said clearly during a July 2025 press conference (listen below) that “[t]his $350 million is not making our community safer” and emphasized that Warshaw “has a financial incentive to continue to find violations and non-compliance, and that needs to be taken into account … If he finds compliance, he’s out of the job.”

Sheriff Jerry Sheridan also explained during an October 2025 radio interview on “The Mike Broomhead Show” (listen below) that the self-described auditors “are not CPAs” and “don’t have the experience to do an audit of a huge government operation,” and he revealed that Warshaw even “had to hire somebody else” because the initial “financial expert didn’t even know how to read a spreadsheet.”

Congressman Andy Biggs similarly wrote a letter about the federal monitor to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi that same month urging her department to “end this more than decades-long overreach,” which “has cost taxpayers nearly $350 million dollars since 2013 with no end in sight,” “plus around $34 million going directly to Warshaw’s consulting firm.”

#3) There Are No Real Pro-Monitor Surrogates

ABC 15’s Manuelita Beck aired a follow-up segment on December 19 titled: “Community organizer slams move to end federal oversight of MCSO.”

The title aims to give the impression of widespread community support for the monitor’s performance, but the entire segment is just … an interview with a Zoomer urging the judge to “not give in to what the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors want.”

I tracked down the interviewee, and he appears to be a random 20-year-old in West Phoenix. ABC 15 has used him as a rent-a-quote surrogate criticizing MCSO at least three times over the past year, including a May 2025 interview with Beck herself and an October 2025 article by her colleague Lillian Donahue.

It took 30 seconds of research for me to locate evidence that the interviewee is a left-wing activist, something the TV station doesn’t disclose. For example, in a video recorded earlier this year at a mass-sign-painting gathering ahead of an anti-MCSO protest, he uses several slurs to describe Melania Trump (“His wife is a stupid immigrant”), Maricopa County’s sheriff (“Deport Jerry Sheridan. I f**king agree”), and Republicans generally (“F**k Nazis … and f**k College Re-c*nt-licans United”).

It’s good when young people engage in politics and I have no reason to doubt this kid’s sincerity, so we can give him a break on the passionate language. What we should be asking, though, is why such a large TV station like ABC 15 can’t find anyone else — and I mean anyone else — to voice support for Warshaw’s operation.

If you ask me, it’s because no one else does.

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