But when it comes to policing the social media output of a particularly cranky critic of Mitchell\u2019s, it would appear they\u2019re happy to play nice.<\/p>\n
In the last few weeks, Mayes has injected her office into a bitter online feud between former Phoenix attorney Vladimir Gagic and Mitchell\u2019s fianc\u00e9, Paul Stout. Gagic and Stout had waged a keyboard war <\/a>for months on the social media site X, with Gagic blasting Mitchell and Stout counterattacking to defend her, albeit under two burner accounts. The feud resulted in Gagic being hit with a protective order limiting what he can tweet about Mitchell\u2019s main squeeze.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tWhen news happens, Phoenix New Times is there \u2014<\/strong> \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWe\u2019re aiming to raise $30,000 by December 31, so we can continue covering what matters most to you. If New Times matters to you, please take action and contribute today, so when news happens, our reporters can be there.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n The attorney general is now investigating whether Gagic violated that order, which technically expired in August. Mayes spokesperson Richie Taylor told Phoenix New Times that the warrant originated from Mayes\u2019 office, which was sent the case by the Phoenix Police Department \u201cbecause of the conflicts at the Maricopa County Attorney\u2019s Office.\u201d<\/p>\n New Times asked Mitchell\u2019s office for a comment on the warrant, but has yet to receive a reply.<\/p>\n Given that the case involves dispeptic tweets, the information Mayes\u2019 office seeks is particularly wide-ranging. State investigators obtained a broad warrant that they sent to the social media site X, seeking a motherlode of data on Gagic\u2019s account @toxicvlad. X\u2019s legal department emailed a copy of the warrant to Gagic on Nov. 6, and Gagic shared it with New Times.\u00a0<\/p>\n Signed by a judge on Oct. 30, it asks X for pretty much everything to do with Gagic\u2019s account, including the times he logged in, his posts, all direct messages received and sent by him, a list of his 861 followers, all users who have liked or reposted his posts, \u201call location data associated with the account,\u201d all data he deleted, a list of everyone he unfollowed or blocked and all X searches performed by him.<\/p>\n Asked about the breadth of the warrant and the possible First Amendment implications, Taylor pointed out that the order limiting Gagic\u2019s online comments about Mitchell\u2019s fianc\u00e9 was upheld by the Arizona Court of Appeals.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Attorney General\u2019s Office takes seriously allegations of harassment against family members of elected officials,\u201d Taylor said.<\/p>\n According to the public record of the case, however, the \u201charassment\u201d at issue would seem to barely fit the term. It involves no direct contact between Stout and Gagic, nor any real threat of violence. Mostly, it was a pissing match between two grown men.<\/p>\n Maricopa County Attorney\u2019s Office Facebook Page<\/p>\n Gagic on the brain\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n New Times first reported on the internet melee between Stout and Gagic in 2024.<\/p>\n That year, Stout admitted on the stand during a hearing over the protective order that he used burner accounts on X<\/a>, taking swipes at local journalists, politicians and Gina Godbehere, who challenged Mitchell in the Republican primary for county attorney. During his incognito run on X, Stout sniped at Gagic, who had criticized how Mitchell handled a sex trafficking case he\u2019d worked as a defense attorney.<\/p>\n Gagic returned fire and then some, calling Stout out by his real name. Apparently easily spooked, Stout filed an injunction against harassment on Gagic in August 2024, which was served to Gagic at his home by three Maricopa County Sheriff\u2019s deputies and an FBI agent. The agent told Gagic the injunction had come from Mitchell\u2019s office and that he could be charged with cyberstalking if he kept tweeting.<\/p>\n Gagic challenged the injunction in court, where Stout took the stand and admitted he used his X sock puppets, @AZJayPaul and @AZ1Patriot, to battle Gagic. Stout, who was represented by three lawyers from a firm that does business with the county, copped to being Mitchell\u2019s fianc\u00e9 and testified that Mitchell had helped draft his injunction petition. Gagic represented himself and questioned Stout, the only time the pair had ever actually spoken to each other.<\/p>\n Both men had flung insults at each other on X \u2014 Stout needling Gagic over a suspension from the State Bar of Arizona, and Gagic calling Stout a \u201cpsycho\u201d and incorrectly suggesting that he might be a different Paul Stout convicted of a sex crime in Texas. Despite that, Maricopa County Commissioner Richard Albrecht upheld the injunction, ruling that it did not violate Gagic\u2019s free speech rights.<\/p>\n Albrecht found that Gagic\u2019s posts would cause a reasonable person \u201cto be seriously alarmed, annoyed or harassed,\u201d which is the rather subjective definition of \u201charassment\u201d under Arizona law. Albrecht wrote that Gagic was allowed to \u201ccomment civilly\u201d on Stout\u2019s \u201cideas\u201d but that Gagic could not post personal attacks that \u201cdo not convey a message of public interest or which contain lewd, profane or obscene remarks.\u201d<\/p>\n Gagic appealed Albrecht\u2019s ruling and continued to post about Stout and Mitchell, but his appeal was denied by the Arizona Court of Appeals in July. Gagic had argued that \u201cStout is acting as a proxy to his fianc\u00e9, the Maricopa County Attorney,\u201d the court noted, but it ultimately found that the initial injunction was not \u201csubstantially motivated by a desire to deter, retaliate against or prevent the lawful exercise of a constitutional right.\u201d<\/p>\n And yet, Stout\u2019s own 2024 petition for the injunction notes that the entire row began when \u201cGagic began posting personal negative comments about my fianc\u00e9e, the county attorney, on X.\u201d Stout has since repeatedly complained to the Phoenix police about Gagic\u2019s postings and even went so far as to call the cops when a New Times reporter phoned him<\/a> to ask him for comment on the saga.<\/p>\n For her part, the county attorney seems preoccupied by Gagic.\u00a0<\/p>\n Though Gagic still cannot practice law as a result of a 2023 bar suspension, Mitchell asked for Gagic\u2019s disbarment in 2024, citing nasty comments he made about Stout and the fact that \u201cGagic has been criticizing me for months on X.\u201d And when someone anonymously sent Mitchell some alleged animal poop in the mail<\/a>, Mitchell called the cops and suggested two possible suspects: Gagic and pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Arizona State University.<\/p>\n Big Sis?<\/strong><\/p>\n No doubt many of Gagic\u2019s posts are obnoxious, inaccurate and, in some cases, could be considered potentially defamatory. But an Orwellian warrant that could involve anyone who \u201cliked\u201d one of Gagic\u2019s posts seems like overkill.<\/p>\n Veteran Phoenix defense attorney Jack Litwak<\/a>, who has handled injunctions against harassment out the proverbial wazoo, pointed out that even if Gagic did commit a crime, it\u2019s likely a low-level offense that a state attorney general usually doesn\u2019t bother with. He said violating an injunction against harassment could be charged as \u201cinterfering with judicial proceedings,\u201d a class 1 misdemeanor<\/a> punishable by up to 6 months in jail. Another possibility could be the use of an electronic communication device<\/a> to \u201cterrify, intimidate, threaten or harass,\u201d also a class 1 misdemeanor.\u00a0<\/p>\n Notably, in Gagic\u2019s case, the only thing close to a threat was when Gagic challenged an X account \u2014 that Stout said didn\u2019t even belong to him \u2014 to meet up somewhere for fisticuffs.<\/p>\n Asked if he thought the Attorney General\u2019s office would bother itself with a misdemeanor charge, Litwak was unsure. \u201cI don\u2019t typically see that without a felony charge,\u201d he said, \u201cbut they will charge misdemeanors associated with felonies.\u201d<\/p>\n Gagic said he was alarmed by the warrant. Its attempt to track his direct messages on X reminded him of communist Yugoslavia, which his parents fled in the 1970s before bringing him to the United States when he was 5.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy does the county\u2019s chief prosecutor, the FBI and the attorney general who\u2019s suing Trump give a shit about my Twitter account?\u201d the former Marine wondered. He added: \u201cAnd if I\u2019m really that bad, if I\u2019m really harassing this asshole, how come Twitter hasn\u2019t done anything?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Gagic denied that he\u2019d ever threatened Stout, saying, \u201cI\u2019m not stupid. I\u2019m not making a threat against anybody.\u201d Regardless, he seemed convinced that Mayes intends to imprison him over his X account, despite the fact that the original injunction against him expired in August.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ve already decided what they\u2019re going to do,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re going to put me in jail, and there\u2019s nothing I can do to fight it. It\u2019s predetermined.\u201d<\/p>\n One possible solution would be to err on the side of caution and stop tweeting. But Gagic said he\u2019s continued to mention Stout and Mitchell online as a kind of \u201cinsurance policy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey know that if they do something to me,\u201d he said, \u201cI\u2019m going to do my goddamn best to put it out there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kris Mayes and Rachel Mitchell aren\u2019t exactly pals. Last year, they traded barbed letters over who has the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":373803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,1587,29536,1589,345,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-373802","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-arizona","10":"tag-az","11":"tag-free-speech","12":"tag-phoenix","13":"tag-social-media","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115537301069332461","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Your support strengthens our coverage.<\/strong><\/strong>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/paul-stout-rachel-mitchell-swearing-in.webp\")
Paul Stout (center) held the Bibles when Rachel Mitchell was sworn in as Maricopa County attorney in 2022. In 2024, he admitted in court to being her fiance and targeting her critics through anonymous social media accounts.<\/p>\n![\"a](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/vladimir-gagic-twitter.png\")
Suspended attorney Vladimir Gagic feuded with Paul Stout online but didn\u2019t meet him in person until Gagic questioned Stout in court at an injunction hearing in September 2024.<\/p>\n