Last Updated on August 1, 2022
Arizona Attorney General Candidate Abraham Hamadeh has run a shady campaign where he’s faked fundraising numbers, changed his name from Ibrahem Jamal Hamadeh, and hidden the truth about his short career as a prosecutor.
While Hamadeh’s LinkedIn claims he was a Prosecutor in Maricopa County’s Attorney’s Office for over 4 years, he spent 14 months of that time deployed to Saudi Arabia with the U.S. Army Reserves, according to his campaign website.
If Hamadeh spent 14 months in Saudi Arabia, he would have had 34 months working for the county’s attorney office. That’s less than three years of experience as a prosecutor.
During his short and uneventful career at the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, just over 100,000 (100,655) criminal cases were filed across the entire office.
That would equate to 2,097 cases per month, or 71,298 during Hamadeh’s 34 months of work with the county.
Of those 71,298 cases, a fraction of them were assigned to Hamadeh.
Only 23 cases were assigned to Hamadeh. Nine more cases were handed off to Hamadeh for probation violation matters but the filing and sentencing work were completed before Hamadeh began working at the office.
A grand total of zero of the thirty-two cases under Hamadeh ever went to trial.
There is no record of Hamadeh ever appearing before a jury or going to trial, and he was only listed as appearing in the courtroom ten times, for six different cases.
While Hamadeh’s court experience is incredibly underwhelming, his fundraising is also questionable.
Hamadeh inflated his fundraising numbers by receiving an enormous loan from his brother, Waseem, on March 21st, before refunding it only 14 days later.
Waseem conveniently donated $1,000,000 to his brother only ten days before the first-quarter FEC fundraising reporting deadline.
Then, after he gave his brother back the million-dollar donation, Hamadeh began advertising that he raised a total of $1,062,579 through the first quarter.
This fraudulent money scheme boosted Hamadeh into the limelight, making it appear he was running a successful fundraising campaign, somehow out-raising all of his opponents even with minimal law experience.
After Hamadeh spread word that he raked in over a million dollars over the three-month-long quarter, former President Donald Trump ended up endorsing the 27-year-old.
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), a close ally of President Trump, believes Hamadeh purposefully padded his fundraising numbers to mislead Trump into endorsing him.
If full disclosure to President Trump was made of the actual cash on hand balance then this is no big deal, but still unusual. But if not, it could be seen as misleading.
— Paul Gosar (@DrPaulGosar) July 20, 2022
Hamadeh only put $80,000 of his own money into his campaign. After refunding his brother’s loan, Hamadeh only received $267,153 in total contributions. That amount pales significantly in comparison to his opponents’ fundraising numbers like the Gosar-endorsed Rodney Glassman, who has raised $1.8 million, Dawn Grove’s $1.23 million, Andrew Gould’s $1.08 million, and Tiffany Shedd’s $416 thousand.
At the end of June, Hamadeh possessed less than $15,000 cash on hand.
Adding to his shady campaign, Hamadeh adopted a tactic used by failed Democrat presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke (Robert Francis O’Rourke).
Abraham Hamadeh was born “Ibrahem Jamal Hamadeh,” but recently filed to change his name allegedly due to “pronunciation” reasons.
Documents shared exclusively with National File by a former JAGC attorney on the condition of anonymity, show Hamadeh is currently under federal investigation by a Department of Defense (DoD) court martial for breaking specific directives involving the separation of military and civilian authority.
Hamadeh has released a multitude of statements that break DoD directive 1344, which covers “Political Activities by Members of the Armed Forces”.
“Arizona needs an Attorney General that’s less Attorney & MORE General,” posted to Twitter in April with a photo of him and other Army personnel.
The attorney general candidate is wearing his U.S. Army uniform in multiple campaign graphics while there is no “prominent and clearly displayed disclaimer that neither the military information nor photographs imply endorsement by the Department of Defense or their particular Military Department,” as DoDD 1344.10 expects.
Simply put, the DoD directive restricts service members from using their role as a “solider” to garner support.
A former JAGC Attorney with extensive knowledge of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and Defense Department Regulations said this of the AZ attorney general candidate:
Hamadeh has lied repeatedly throughout this campaign. He’s lied about the extent of his career at the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, the number of Felony cases he prosecuted, and his deployment to Saudi Arabia. He is so dishonest that he even implied he was prosecuting criminals in the county attorney’s office while he was 8,000 miles away deployed in Saudi Arabia.
Is this someone you want to elect as Arizona Attorney General, with supervising an office with 400+ Attorneys and 1,000 employees, a budget over $61million, and the duty to protect the people of the state by fighting crime, consumer fraud, illegal immigration, and defending Arizona from the federal government?
Some Republicans have expressed concern over Hamadeh’s religion. Conservative commentator Maggie McCarthy noted that Hamadeh is a “sharia Muslim practitioner” and suggested that religious Muslims are “unfit for public office.”
Trump endorsed a sharia Muslim practitioner. Here is Abe Hamadeh wearing a white ihram at Islam’s most holy site — Mecca. pic.twitter.com/8X6mG2GXub
— Maggie McCarthy (@FogCityMidge) July 29, 2022
The Islamic faith rejects a variety of fundamental U.S. beliefs and beliefs like freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, economic liberty, and equal treatment under the law.
Hamadeh has hidden his religion and faith from the public eye throughout the entirety of his campaign.
The Arizona Republican primary is on August 2nd.
Stay tuned to National File for any updates.