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Arizona House Speaker Steve Montenegro Demands to Know Why Kris Mayes is Not Prosecuting Katie Hobbs | IntellectualConservative | intellectualconservative.com
# Arizona House Speaker Steve Montenegro Demands to Know Why Kris Mayes is Not Prosecuting Katie Hobbs
- 09/06/2026 - by: House Speaker Steve Montenegro - Source: IntellectualConservative - 09/06/2026
House Speaker Steve Montenegro by is licensed under
STEVE B. MONTENEGRO SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE DISTRICT 29
Arizona House of Representatives Phoenix, Arizona 85007
August 27, 2026
Kris Mayes Arizona Attorney General 2005 North Central Avenue Phoenix, AZ 85004-2926
Dear Attorney General Mayes:
As you know, in my capacity as Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, I have been conducting a legislative investigation into allegations involving rate increases received by Sunshine Residential Homes in 2023 and 2024. To preserve the integrity of that investigation—as well as parallel law-enforcement investigations—I have not publicized our investigative steps or any interim conclusions that may have been reached.
However, your Office’s August 20, 2026 Memorandum cannot remain unaddressed. That Memorandum reflects serious deficiencies that call into question whether the investigation was conducted in good faith and for legitimate purposes. 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. 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.
In light of the foregoing, I respectfully request that your Office provide specific written answers to the following questions by no later than 5:00 p.m. on September 4, 2026.
### 1. Did you investigate any crimes that may have been committed by Simon Kottoor or Sunshine, including an offer to wrongly influence a public officer in 2022 that was corroborated by multiple witnesses whom you claim to have interviewed?
Your Office’s Memorandum rightly notes that Arizona’s bribery statute “is purposefully broad, ensuring it covers all possible forms of attempts to wrongly influence public officers,” including offers made to corruptly influence public officers. Your report claims you did not find “any evidence” of such conduct.
However, the very witnesses that you claim to have interviewed have described an instance in which Simon Kottoor offered something of value to a government official to wrongly influence a decision about a rate increase request. In particular, former DCS Director Michael Faust revealed that, in the fall of 2022, Simon Kottoor told Faust that Kottoor would recommend that Governor-elect Hobbs retain Faust as DCS Director if Faust would approve a rate increase for Sunshine. Faust refused Kottoor’s offer, and DCS did not grant a rate increase for Sunshine during Faust’s tenure. Faust also immediately reported Kottoor’s offer to then-Deputy Director Robert Navarro. Another senior DCS employee, Alex Ong, also confirmed that he had contemporaneous knowledge of Kottoor’s offer. See Ong Testimony at 106-108.
Faust was a credible candidate to remain as DCS Director, was interviewed by Governor Hobbs’s transition team for the role, and had the support of many DCS personnel to remain. 1 But he subsequently was not retained as DCS Director.
Any credible investigation that involved interviews of Faust, Navarro, and Ong should have revealed this event. And this event is serious enough that—if your Office’s investigation uncovered the event—it should have been investigated and at least addressed in the Memorandum. Yet the Memorandum entirely omits the event. Kottoor’s apparent offer to Faust is not merely relevant because it could potentially constitute a crime in itself. It also provides the context for Sunshine’s subsequent rate increases, as it showed senior DCS personnel that Kottoor had the apparent ability and willingness to use his influence with Governor Hobbs to obtain a rate increase. In other words, it is essential to understanding how Sunshine obtained rate increases in 2023 and 2024.
### 2. Why did you uncritically rely on David Lujan’s self-serving statements, when those statements were contradicted by both documentary evidence and the testimony of other witnesses whom you claim to have interviewed?
Your Office’s Memorandum relies heavily on former DCS Director David Lujan’s version of events. Indeed, Lujan’s account provides the backbone for your Office’s conclusion that no misconduct occurred with respect to Sunshine’s 2023 and 2024 rate increases. Yet key aspects of Lujan’s account cannot withstand even minimal scrutiny.
For example, your report claims that Lujan simply “[r]el[ied] on staff recommendations” when he “approved the rate increase in May 2023,” and that “both Ong and Navarro recommended” it. But both Ong and Navarro dispute this claim. Both Ong and Navarro consistently and credibly indicated that they opposed the May 2023 rate increase. As Ong testified, “consistently, our recommendation was to deny it.” Ong Testimony at 170-171. However, Ong had the impression that “Director Lujan [was] going to grant [the rate increase] no matter what” Ong said. Id. at 172. Ong ultimately went along with granting the rate increase only because he thought that Lujan would fire agency staff if they continued to oppose it. Id. at 174, 177. In Ong’s words, he was “afraid of the Director firing all of us, because we did not support what he wanted to do.” Id. at 177. Navarro also indicated that he did not support the rate increase, and Lujan in fact fired him just weeks later. Contemporaneous documentary evidence corroborates Ong’s and Navarro’s statements. This evidence directly contradicts a central part of your Office’s conclusions, and it calls into question Lujan’s credibility on all other points as well. No diligent investigator could have overlooked these issues.
Your report also parrots Lujan’s claim in September 2023—in response to a request from the Governor’s Office for talking points—that Sunshine’s rate increase request “was and still is the only congregate care provider rate increase request that I have received since taking the position.” This claim was false, and Lujan knew it. For example, shortly before the email, in July 2023, DCS rejected a rate increase request that had been submitted by another congregate care provider, Power House. Ong testified that Lujan would have been involved in the decision to deny the increase and in fact would have made “the final call.” Ong Testimony at 215, 257. The fact that Lujan would make such a demonstrably false statement while trying to justify his involvement in the Sunshine rate increase raises serious questions about Lujan’s credibility and motivations. Yet your Office’s Memorandum does not address the issue at all.
Your report also uncritically repeats Lujan’s claim that “Simon [Kottoor] told me that Faust had verbally promised him a rate increase in 2022 and never came through.” Faust has stated publicly: “Any insinuation that I had committed to give [Sunshine] a rate increase is an outright fabrication. There’s no way in hell I would have done that.” Navarro specifically denied that Sunshine was ever promised a rate increase under Faust’s tenure. Ong similarly agreed in his testimony that any such statement by Kottoor would have been a “lie.” Ong Testimony at 210-211. If Kottoor did actually make such a claim, Lujan should have known it to be false. Clearly, if Lujan had asked either Navarro or Ong—two of Lujan’s most senior employees—they would have informed him of the claim’s falsity. Moreover, the claim is fundamentally implausible in light of DCS’s longstanding practices and repeated denials of congregate care rate increases. At best, Lujan allowed h