EXCLUSIVE: Keystone Cops or Cover-Up? How Arizona AG Kris Mayes Has Handled Investigation Involving Fellow Democrat – Governor Katie Hobbs

EXCLUSIVE: Keystone Cops or Cover-Up? How Arizona AG Kris Mayes Has Handled Investigation Involving Fellow Democrat – Governor Katie Hobbs

How the Hobbs-Sunshine Referral Became a Criminal Investigation —and the 2-Year Fight Over Who Would Conduct It

By Linda Brickman

From “Reporter” Mayes to “Reported” on Mayes – Part 1

SECTION 1 — ONE REFERRAL. TWO PROSECUTORS.

It began with a question.

On June 5, 2024, Arizona State Senator T.J. Shope referred allegations involving Sunshine Residential Homes to both (Democrat) Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes and (Republican) Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell.  (The alligations were connected to Democrat Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs.)

Shope was not announcing that a crime had been committed.  He was asking prosecutors to determine whether the allegations warranted investigation.  AG Mayes answered quickly.

The next day, June 6, Chief Counsel Nick Klingerman of the Attorney General’s Criminal Division wrote Shope that the division was statutorily authorized to investigate the allegations in his referral.

The Attorney General’s Office would open a criminal investigation.

So far, fairly straightforward.

Then came June 7.

Mayes wrote directly to Mitchell, acknowledging that Shope had referred the matter to both offices and that Mitchell was planning — or had already begun — her own investigation. Mayes also noted that Mitchell had contacted Arizona Auditor General Lindsey Perry about coordinating their work.

Then Mayes drew a line.  “It would not be appropriate or in the best interest of the state to conduct parallel investigations into the same matter.”

Mayes warned that a separate Maricopa County investigation could jeopardize the integrity of the criminal investigation her office intended to pursue. She told Mitchell that if the Attorney General’s Office needed assistance from either Mitchell or the Auditor General, Mayes’s office would reach out.

Mayes sent a similar message to Auditor General Perry that same day. Perry’s assistance with Mitchell’s investigation, Mayes wrote, was not needed by the Attorney General’s Office at that time.

In forty-eight hours, the story had changed.  The question was no longer simply: Should the Sunshine allegations be investigated?

Mayes had already answered that.  Yes.

The new question was: Who should be doing the investigating?

And that question would become considerably more complicated.  Because Rachel Mitchell did not step aside.

SECTION 2. MITCHELL SAYS NO

Mayes may have wanted one investigation.  Rachel Mitchell had other plans.

On June 11, Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell responded to Mayes and made clear that her office would continue its own investigation into Sunshine Residential Homes and would prosecute if the evidence warranted prosecution.

Mitchell’s concern went beyond jurisdiction.  She warned that public confidence mattered, particularly when the allegations touched Arizona’s highest elected officials. She told Mayes that insisting on being the sole investigator could deepen public distrust rather than resolve it.

Now Arizona had something unusual: 

• Two elected prosecutors.
• One set of allegations.
• And neither one was leaving.

Mayes maintained that parallel investigations could compromise the integrity of her criminal investigation and create unnecessary duplication. That concern was not frivolous. Former Arizona Supreme Court Justice Andrew Gould publicly agreed that multiple agencies interviewing the same witnesses and requesting the same records could complicate or slow an investigation.

But Mayes’s attempt to take control of the investigation immediately drew another kind of scrutiny.

On June 10, State Representative David Livingston demanded that Mayes recuse herself.

Livingston argued that Maricopa County’s elected county attorney possessed independent prosecutorial authority over offenses committed within the county and accused Mayes of attempting to claim jurisdiction over an investigation involving Governor Hobbs, the Arizona Democratic Party, Sunshine Residential Homes and DCS.

That was Livingston’s accusation, not an established finding.

But he pointed to an undisputed fact that would become central to the controversy:

Mayes had not merely opened her own investigation. She had asked another elected prosecutor not to conduct hers.

Livingston also challenged Mayes’s reliance on Arizona law concerning the Auditor General. Mayes had argued that because the Attorney General supervises prosecutions arising from Auditor General investigations, a separate Mitchell-Auditor General investigation should not proceed. Livingston countered that Arizona law also authorizes the Auditor General to work with county attorneys and that the County Attorney’s prosecutorial authority had not simply vanished because the Attorney General entered the case.

So, what began as a referral about possible wrongdoing involving a foster-care provider had become something else:

A Dispute Over Investigative Control.

And that distinction matters.

There is no evidence simply from these letters that Mayes was trying to protect Katie Hobbs.  There is also no question that Mayes attempted to prevent a parallel investigation by Mitchell and the Auditor General.  Those are two very different statements.  The first requires evidence of motive.

The second is contained in Mayes’s own correspondence.  And Mitchell refused.

Which leaves an obvious question:

Why was control of the Sunshine investigation important enough for Arizona’s Attorney General to tell two other investigative offices to stand down almost immediately after opening her own case?

Before attempting to answer that question, however, we need to understand what had landed on the prosecutors’ desks in the first place.

Because Sunshine Residential Homes was not simply another state contractor.

• There was money.
• There were political contributions.
• There was a state contract.
• And there was one very unusual rate increase.

SECTION 3. FOLLOW THE MONEY — AND THE RATE HIKE

Why did Sunshine Residential Homes attract the attention of two prosecutors in the first place?

Because the chronology was difficult to ignore.

Sunshine Residential Homes operated approximately 30 group homes in Maricopa County for children removed from their families by the Department of Child Safety. It was one of the largest providers of group-home beds in Arizona.  It was also politically generous.

Before Katie Hobbs became Governor, Sunshine donated $200,000 to the Arizona Democratic Party shortly before the 2022 election.

     Then came the inaugural celebration.

Sunshine contributed $100,000 to Hobbs’s inaugural fund. Sunshine CEO Simon Kottoor served on Hobbs’s inaugural committee, personally contributed to her campaign, and his company presented Hobbs with an award approximately one month before the election.

• Political contributions, of course, are not crimes.
• Neither is serving on an inaugural committee.

The problem was what happened next…

In December 2022, Sunshine requested a rate increase from the Department of Child Safety.  DCS denied the request in February 2023.

Sunshine tried again in May.  This time, the request was approved.

And according to reporting at the time the controversy erupted, Sunshine was the only group-home provider under the Hobbs administration to receive an individual rate increase outside the routine contract-renewal process.

Eventually, 52 other providers received increases during regular contract negotiations in June 2024.  But Sunshine had received its special increase earlier.  That sequence produced the question that landed on Senator Shope’s desk:

Did political money have anything to do with the government money that followed?

No prosecutor had answered that question when Shope made his referral.  And the existence of contributions followed by favorable state action does not, by itself, prove bribery, fraud or pay-to-play.

But Shope believed the circumstances were serious enough to ask prosecutors to examine possible violations involving bribery, fraud, procurement, conflicts of interest and the expenditure of state funds.  Mayes agreed that the allegations warranted a criminal investigation.  So did Mitchell.  And that brings us back to the peculiar part of this story.

If both prosecutors agreed there was enough here to investigate, why did Arizona’s Attorney General believe only one of them should be doing it?

There was another complication…

The person at the top of the administration being examined was not merely another public official.  She was Governor Katie Hobbs — a fellow Democrat.

That fact does not establish a conflict.  But it made public confidence in the independence of the investigation particularly important.  And it made what happened next impossible to dismiss as a simple bureaucratic disagreement.  Because the dispute over Sunshine did not end in June 2024.

Two years later, the case was still open.

SECTION 4. TWO YEARS LATER — STILL OPEN

Mayes wanted one investigation… Arizona eventually got more than one.

By 2026, the Attorney General’s investigation remained active. Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell was conducting her own investigation into the same underlying allegations. And in February, the Arizona House retained independent outside counsel to review records, conduct interviews and report findings concerning the Sunshine-DCS controversy.

Nearly two years after Mayes first told Mitchell that parallel investigations were not in the state’s best interest, Mitchell was still investigating…And Mayes still had not finished hers.

Then another unusual development surfaced.

By April 2026, Mayes’s investigators had requested an interview with Governor Hobbs. Hobbs publicly declined to say whether she would agree to one, although she continued to deny wrongdoing and said she expected the investigation ultimately to confirm that she had not been involved in DCS’s decision concerning Sunshine.

By July 30, there was still no interview date.

Mayes’s office had reportedly been seeking an interview with Hobbs for much of the year, while the Governor’s Office and Attorney General’s Office remained in discussions about whether and when that interview would occur.  Then, on August 3, Mayes offered the clearest indication yet that something was coming.

She said her office was “near the end of the investigation” and promised an announcement before the November election. She would not say whether that announcement would include information obtained directly from Hobbs, who still had not agreed to sit for the requested interview.

That creates another curious question.  If the investigation was nearly finished, how could investigators reach a final conclusion about allegations touching the Governor’s administration without first obtaining the Governor’s account?

Perhaps they can … Perhaps documents and other witnesses provide the answers investigators need.

More than two years later, Arizona still does not know what Mayes’s investigation found — or why a case important enough to ask other investigators to step aside has taken this long.

And the Legislature did exactly what Mayes initially argued against:

It brought in another investigator.

The House retained outside counsel in February 2026 to independently examine the Sunshine matter, review records and conduct interviews.  So, the IRONY is difficult to miss.

In June 2024, Mayes warned that multiple investigations could jeopardize the integrity of the case.

By 2026, multiple investigations were exactly what Arizona had.

And the original question remained unanswered:  What happened between Sunshine Residential Homes, the Hobbs Administration and the Department of Child Safety?

But now another question belongs beside it:  What happened inside the investigation itself?

SECTION 5. THE CLOCK IS TICKING

Mayes’s promised pre-election announcement adds one final complication:

Both Mayes and Hobbs are seeking reelection.

That does not prove political interference.

But after more than two years, Arizona voters are entitled to something simpler:

AN ANSWER!

• Did political contributions influence the treatment Sunshine Residential received?
• Why did Mayes initially seek to prevent Mitchell from conducting a parallel investigation?
• And what has the Attorney General’s investigation ultimately found?
• Was anyone being protected — or did the handling of the investigation create the appearance of a cover-up?

Mayes says an announcement is coming BEFORE Election Day.

Until then, the Sunshine Case Remains Open. So Do the Questions.

Keystone Cops or Cover-Up?

By Linda Brickman

©2026 Linda Brickman. All Rights Reserved.

Coming NEXT IN THE KRIS MAYES FILE…

PART 2 — ARIZONA’S ATTORNEY GENERAL GOES TO WAR WITH WASHINGTON

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