Phoenix police confirmed they responded to a burglary call from Hobbs’ campaign office on Tuesday afternoon and took unspecified items during the night. Detectives are checking security cameras to try to identify the suspect, said police spokesman Phil Krynsky. In surveillance images obtained by The Washington Post from Hobbs’ campaign, a young man in shorts and a green T-shirt can be seen inside the building.
Phoenix police did not identify those arrested and said they would release more information later Thursday.
“Over the course of the campaign, Minister Hobbs and her staff faced hundreds of death threats and threats of violence. In this race, we have always been clear that the safety of our staff and ministers is our number one priority ,” Hobbs campaign manager Nicole Demont said in a statement late Wednesday.
“Let’s be clear: For nearly two years, Cary Lake and her allies have been spreading dangerous misinformation and inciting threats against anyone they see fit,” Demont added. “Threats to Arizonans trying to exercise their constitutional rights and their attacks on elected officials are a direct result of a campaign of lies and intimidation.”
Lake told CNN that the Hobbs campaign’s statement was “absolutely ridiculous.”
“Did you buy that? Did you really buy that? Because it sounds like the second part of Jussie Smollett,” Lake told CNN, referring to the actor who was convicted of lying about a hate crime. “She’s trying to divert her own bad campaign and the fact that no one even knows where her campaign office is.”
Lake and Hobbs have been in a tight gubernatorial race, with polls showing the two locked in a tight race. Lake, endorsed by Donald Trump, accepts and spreads the former president’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Trump and his allies, including Lake, have particularly questioned the outcome of the election in Arizona, where Joe Biden narrowly defeated him — the first time a Democrat has won the state since 1996.
As secretary of state, Hobbs has defended Arizona’s electoral process as the man charged with proving a Biden victory in 2020. She called Lake a threat to democracy and referred an alleged voter intimidation incident to the Justice Department and the FBI earlier this month. Arizona Attorney General.
“There was a group of people hanging out near the ballot box, filming me and my wife as we approached the ballot box, and accusing us of being mules,” said the report, written by a voter in suburban Phoenix and obtained by The Post. “They took … our license plate and our picture, then followed us out of the parking lot in one of their cars and continued filming.”
While Hobbs defended the use of drop boxes as a safe way to ensure ballot access, Lake encouraged questioning and expressed support for citizen surveillance.
in July, Lake posted on twitter A photo of a drop box she said was in northern Arizona. “Potential mules beware: we’re watching drop boxes across the state,” she said. “Smile…you might be in front of the camera!”
Yvonne Wengert Sanchez contributed to this report.