By Gram Slattery
(Reuters) -Phoenix police on Thursday arrested a person suspected of breaking into the campaign headquarters of Arizona Democratic gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs two days earlier.
Phoenix police said they had arrested Daniel Mota Dos Reis, 36, in connection to a burglary. While they did not reference the Hobbs incident directly, a source with knowledge of the probe confirmed the arrest related to the campaign break-in.
“We are very thankful that the Phoenix Police Department acted so quickly to arrest a suspect,” Hobbs’ campaign manager, Nicole DeMont, said in a statement.
In recent days, Hobbs’ campaign and Republican opponent Kari Lake have traded barbs over the incident.
The Hobbs camp has criticized Lake, who has embraced Donald Trump’s false claims of widespread U.S. election fraud, for failing to condemn threats to election workers and voters. Hobbs’ campaign said Lake’s harsh rhetoric and embrace of Trump’s election falsehoods created the conditions for the burglary to take place.
Lake has called any attempt to blame her campaign “absolutely absurd.”
In a statement, police said that an officer had recognized Dos Reis on a news story that displayed an image from security footage of the alleged burglary.
Dos Reis had already been arrested on Wednesday for a separate alleged commercial burglary, police said. They added that police had recovered the items allegedly stolen by Dos Reis.
Last week, the Arizona secretary of state referred an instance of alleged voter intimidation to the state attorney general and the U.S. Justice Department in what appeared to be the first nationwide criminal referral of its kind this election cycle.
Lake has repeatedly cast doubt on whether she would accept a possible defeat in Arizona.
(Reporting by Gram Slattery in WashingtonEditing by Scott Malone, Cynthia Osterman and Matthew Lewis)
