by Staff Reporter | May 13, 2026 | News
By Staff Reporter |
A court rejected Republican State Rep. Rachel Keshel’s (R-LD17) attempt to stop an anonymous X user behind a months-long online campaign challenging her Legislative District 17 residency.
Keshel and her husband, Seth Keshel, claimed in a complaint that the anonymous online researcher operating under the name “William Coffin” (@CoffinItUp), is a Scottsdale horse trainer named Geoff Coffin. Coffin has denied being behind the account.
On Monday, the Pima County Superior Court dismissed last month’s injunction against harassment targeting the anonymous user. The court determined that the Keshels failed to prove that Coffin and Coffin were one and the same.
The anonymous “Coffin” profile dates back to 2020; the profile picture features William Sloane Coffin Sr., a New York businessman whom the anonymous user identified as an ancestor in an Arizona Agenda interview last month.
The Keshels alleged the connection between the two Coffins by comparing photos and an online map posted by the influencer to the location of Geoff’s home.
The anonymous user behind the X account told the Tucson Agenda that he lives in the Phoenix metro area.
The pseudonymous X account gained a following online through his commentary and analysis of public records on right-wing figures. Much of the anonymous account’s posts in its early years of existence focused on criticizing President Donald Trump.
One of the account’s earliest posts to gain some traction contained a tip claiming top right-wing influencer Dominick McGee — known as “Dom Lucre” online — was under investigation by the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance for operating an unlicensed credit repair business called Credit Cadabra.
Over the last year, the account gained traction for his posts on perennial Texas candidate Valentina Gomez.
In recent months, the account has focused on Rep. Keshel’s residency—specifically, alleging that Keshel does not reside within LD17 but instead in the Vail residence in LD19 where her husband owns property.
The individual behind William Coffin also briefly maintained a Substack called “Corruption Duck.”
In the interview last month with the Arizona Agenda, the X user said that prior to focusing his research on Republicans and influential right-wingers, he focused on mortgage fraud.
“[I] started looking at mortgage fraud, and found that I could basically throw a dart in my neighborhood and hit (someone committing) mortgage fraud,” said the user. “It’s basically people buying houses with principal residence mortgages and renting them out the next day as investment properties.”
The Corruption Duck Substack, active from January to December 2023, was created initially with an intent for the author, “Will,” to focus on corruption and fraud in the nonprofit realm.
For the first few months of its existence, however, the Substack focused on investigating and reporting mortgage fraud in the Valley to authorities.
In mid-May 2023, the Substack pivoted to publishing exposes about Republicans and right-wingers, first posting about Dom Lucre and then another Arizona native and holistic medicine influencer Razi Berry (@BerryRazi on X).
AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.
by Staff Reporter | Nov 18, 2024 | Education, News
By Staff Reporter |
Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD) will no longer be using X to stay engaged with the community, with the given reason being a lack of a “family-friendly” environment.
SUSD made the announcement last week, also alluding to board policy necessitating their ceasing the use of X. The district will remain on Facebook and Instagram instead.
“In line with board policy IJNDB and our commitment to safety, SUSD schools are stepping away from X to prioritize family-friendly engagement,” said SUSD. “For updates, find us on Facebook, Instagram, or visit http://susd.org. Let’s stay connected in spaces that uphold our values.”
IJNDB refers to policy on the use of technology resources in instruction. Per that policy, the district implements technology protections against visual depictions that are obscene, child pornography, or content which may be discerned as harmful to minors.
Yet, the district allows children access to sexually explicit books and content in its libraries and classrooms.
In stepping away from the use of X, the district also remarked that X failed to align with its values. In addition to protections for sexually explicit materials, SUSD holds values such as transgenderism in minors, social emotional learning, and critical race theory.
SUSD made their announcement a week after Election Day, when Donald Trump won the presidency and Republicans secured a trifecta.
Tech billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk bought Twitter (now X) for the express purpose of preserving and supporting free speech following the 2020 election. During that election, the silencing of certain right-wing voices occurred under social media platforms such as Twitter and Big Tech companies.
SUSD lost nearly 500 students over the course of this past year, amounting to millions in lost revenue. The auditor general has scored the district as “high risk” due to its continued decline in enrollment. Enrollment has declined 10 percent under the tenure of SUSD Superintendent Scott Menzel, and reports have emerged of record staff turnover.
Additionally, SUSD spending on classrooms and teachers have hit another historical low for this school year: 54 percent versus nearly 64 percent from 20 years ago, just over the lowest fiscal year (2017, which amounted to 53 percent).
Parent watchdog group Scottsdale Unites for Education Integrity said the nine percent decrease signified a $40 million redirection of funds from academic achievement.
Menzel also enjoyed a pay raise earlier this semester despite falling short of academic performance goals: achievements in math, English-Language Arts (ELA), and science fell below desired outcomes. Over 8,000 students weren’t proficient in ELA, over 9,000 weren’t proficient in math, and over 12,000 weren’t proficient in science.
The only goals which Menzel accomplished were nonacademic, and they amounted to less than half of the goals set: increases in attendance rates, student participation in extracurricular and cocurricular activities, and certified staff retention; an establishment of a baseline for work-based learning opportunities and hours completed using Major Clarity; and production of a decision-making matrix and at least one proposal for action by June.
AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.
by Daniel Stefanski | Jun 1, 2023 | Education, News
By Daniel Stefanski |
An Arizona Democrat leader is receiving pushback for his selective cropping of a memo from the Arizona Department of Education.
On Tuesday, Christine Accurso, the Executive Director of the ESA Program for Republican Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne’s administration, submitted “the annual estimate of the amount required to fund empowerment scholarship accounts” to the Joint Legislative Budget Committee for the 2024 fiscal year.
Accurso’s estimate concluded “that the projected enrollment by the end of Fiscal Year 2024 will be at 100,000 students with roughly $900,000,000 necessary to fund them.”
Andrés Cano, the Democrat Leader in the Arizona House of Representatives, tweeted out the memo – up until the point where Accurso shared the price tag of the program. He added. “without reform, Empowerment Scholarship Accounts will bankrupt our state & our public schools.”
Cano left out the last paragraph of the memo, where Accurso wrote: “We have made this projection with the help of our Chief Auditor, John Ward who conducted the analysis. It is important to note that we currently have 57,886 students in the program. For budgeting purposes, it is also important to note that many of the students that are enrolling now are coming from the public school system, which in the end saves the state money because the empowerment scholarship accounts are funded at a lower percentage than the state aid for a pupil in the public school system.”
One of the top school choice advocates in the country, Corey DeAngelis, highlighted the omission from Cano, tweeting, “hey why did you cut off the end of the letter.” DeAngelis included an image of the entire memo.
He also asked, “how much would those same students cost in the government schools?”
Jason Bedrick, a Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, also weighed in, stating, “$900M is about 1% of the state’s $80.5 billion budget – and the ESA costs about half as much per pupil as the public school system. The sky isn’t falling.”
Grant Botma, a best-selling author also shared his thoughts on Cano’s charge, posting, “The Arizona Auditor General report shows the public school system spends $10,729 per pupil. The $900,000,000 divided by 100,000 from your image is $9000 per student. That is a $1,729 savings. How would that “bankrupt our state”?
Members from both sides of the political aisle at the Arizona Legislature quickly piled onto Cano’s controversial tweet. On the Republican side, Representative Jacqueline Parker commented, “This is GREAT! But not enough yet. $900 million is a drop in the bucket to the other $7+BILLION spent on the useless indoctrination camps that are ‘government schools’. Until ESA’s are pulling at LEAST $5 Billion from government schools, our job is not yet finished.”
Representative Joseph Chaplik tweeted, “Simply not true. Just like the state doesn’t fund K-12 enough. This same lie is getting old fast!”
On the Democrat side, Senator Priya Sundareshan wrote, “During the last few months we were getting estimates that the cost to the state of the universal voucher program had increased to $600M, instead of the $30M originally promised when they passed it last year. Now we see it has already grown to $900M. How high will it climb??”
Twitter provided a community note to provide context for Cano’s tweet: “Cano has cropped out the portion of the letter which explains how this program saves the state money. The cropped out portion directly counters his claim that this program will ‘bankrupt our state.’”
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Daniel Stefanski | May 25, 2023 | News
By Daniel Stefanski|
An Arizona Republican lawmaker’s videos from a recent border visit appeared to have been deleted from Twitter.
Last week, freshman Representative Austin Smith traveled to Cochise County and stopped by the border to gain first-hand knowledge about the crisis created by the Biden Administration’s policies. He posted two pictures and two videos from his visit to his Twitter account, writing, “Eye opening experience down here on the border. Joe Biden and Mayorkas are derelict in their duty to our country. Absolutely shameful. God bless the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department. They are doing everything they can to keep Arizona and the United States safe. FINISH THE DANG WALL!”
Soon after his media went live to the social media site, the two videos seemed to have disappeared. AZ Free News viewed the post and observed that in place of the videos were the captions “This video has been deleted.”
Smith also noticed the deletion of his videos, sending a public message to Elon Musk to inquire why this had occurred.
He then reposted the videos on a separate thread, where they remain accessible to the public to view.
The videos Representative Smith published were generic commentaries about the state of the border according to his on-the-ground experience. In the first video, Smith is stationary by the border wall and talks about the number of ‘gotaways’ crossing into the country and the lack of Border Patrol agents around to detect and apprehend any illegal crossers in that area. He states that “the Biden Administration is truly derelict in its duty to protect the United States of America,” and he spends much of his time comparing and contrasting the differences in border security under the Trump and Biden Administrations. He also pleads with his viewers to make political changes with the presidency and the U.S. Senate in the 2024 election in order to effect real change at the border.
In the second video, Smith compares the size of walls before the Trump administration and from the Trump administration, showing that President Trump’s administration built taller infrastructure along the United States-Mexico border.
The first-year Arizona Representative was in Cochise County for the May 20th County Republican Club Lincoln Day Dinner, where he was the keynote speaker. Smith has quickly built out a profile for himself at the Arizona Legislature, focusing, in large part, on stopping Ranked Choice Voting from entering the state.
After the dinner, he tweeted a picture of him and his fiancée at the event, writing, “Thank you to the great grassroots of @realcochisegop for having @amyesamuel and I tonight! Fantastic group of southern Arizonans!”
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Daniel Stefanski | Mar 30, 2023 | News
By Daniel Stefanski |
One of the more-controversial social media posts in recent Arizona memory cost Democrat Governor Katie Hobbs the services of her press secretary.
On Wednesday morning, it was announced that Josselyn Berry had resigned her position as Governor Hobbs’ Press Secretary – not long after she had tweeted a GIF that showed a woman with two firearms, including the caption “Us when we see transphobes.”
After the news of Berry’s resignation hit the wires, the Governor’s Office released a carefully crafted statement: “The Governor does not condone violence in any form. This administration holds mutual respect at the forefront of how we engage with one another. The post by the Press Secretary is not reflective of the values of the administration. The Governor has received and accepted the resignation of the Press Secretary.”
The Arizona Freedom Caucus responded to the report, writing, “The Press Sec. for @GovernorHobbs has RESIGNED over this vile tweet calling for violence against Democrats’ political opponents. Katie Hobbs should stop surrounding herself with far-left partisans & instead hire people focused on doing the work of the people.”
Republican Representative Cory McGarr tweeted, “Probably too high of an ask for competent people to be appointed to positions.”
Berry’s resignation followed hours of intense commentary – both locally and nationally – about her tweet. Many Republican legislators demanded her termination due to the nature of her post.
This wasn’t the first time Berry had created controversy with her Twitter account. As AZ Free News recently reported: “While communications director for the Arizona State Senate Democratic Caucus in 2020, Berry quote tweeted FBI Most Wanted Terrorist Assata Shakur several days after George Floyd’s death. Shakur escaped prison after having been convicted for murdering a cop and committing armed robbery, among other crimes. Arizona Senate Democrats also tweeted the quote on their profile, but deleted the offending tweet and issued an apology after backlash.”
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
