Here’s the latest on the ongoing audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, Arizona. . .
First up, former President Trump is headed to Phoenix on Saturday and will speak at a TPUSA event:
Come see President Trump in Phoenix TOMORROW at Turning Point Action’s @TrumpStudents Rally to Protect Our Elections
TICKETS—https://t.co/zpI6uq18ng pic.twitter.com/0oZzVA4Ks4
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) July 23, 2021
And he’s already attacked Republican State Senator Paul Boyer for blocking more subpoenas of election materials that Cyber Ninjas, the firm doing the audit, says they need to finish it:
NEW!
"Republican Arizona State Senator Paul Boyer, a RINO if there ever was one, is doing everything in his power to hold up the damning Forensic Audit of Maricopa County…All we demand is Voter Integrity!" pic.twitter.com/yzqupoTMXk
— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) July 22, 2021
The main issue here is a request for the routers which County officials say will put other information at risk and have refused to provide them:
Fully qualify, I'm not a networking guy. I know that the county does not want to hand over the routers b/c they don't want MAC/IP address pairs exposed for their other departments, especially the sheriffs since someone could use that to discover sheriff network traffic.
— The AZ – abc15 – Data Guru (@Garrett_Archer) July 16, 2021
Boyer fired back, mocking Trump for getting kicked off of Twitter and the auditors for looking for bamboo fibers on the ballots:
Had Trump built the wall like he promised, perhaps he could’ve prevented the 40k #BambooBallots from being imported into Arizona 😆. And if he hadn’t started an insurrection in D.C. and gotten kicked off here, I could’ve responded directly to him. So there’s that. pic.twitter.com/elGvwIHca0
— Paul Boyer (@PaulDBoyer) July 22, 2021
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And as for the audit, things don’t appear to be going well at all.
Doug Logan of Cyber Ninjas released a statement through State Senator Wendy Rogers where he blamed Maricopa County for any misinterpretation over 74,000 mail-in ballots that the auditors claimed lacked proof they were ever sent:
From Doug Logan on the 74k Ballots:
“There were 74,000 EV33 forms that did not have matching EV32s. EV33s are for received ballots, while EV32s are for sent ballots. This was brought up in the context of justifying why we should do canvassing, because the situation didn’t (1/5)
— Wendy Rogers (@WendyRogersAZ) July 23, 2021
make any sense. Canvassing would give an explanation as to what was happening here, and if anything was wrong or if there is a good explanation for it. If Maricopa county officials were answering questions, as in a normal audit, they would’ve had an opportunity to explain. (2/5)
— Wendy Rogers (@WendyRogersAZ) July 23, 2021
However, even if they’d give us an explanation, as auditors we would then need to validate if their response logically explained the situation. We are working to validate the claims by Maricopa county that they put out on Twitter. If they were to act professionally, these (3/5)
— Wendy Rogers (@WendyRogersAZ) July 23, 2021
conversations could just happen in meetings; but their sole goal has been to try to discredit the audit. They clearly don’t know anything about how professional audits go, if they think this sort of issue is something an auditor would know walking in the door (4/5)
— Wendy Rogers (@WendyRogersAZ) July 23, 2021
without asking questions.” (5/5)
— Wendy Rogers (@WendyRogersAZ) July 23, 2021
We covered this here:
Maricopa County disputes the claim made by the #AZAudit and Trump that 74,000 more mail-in ballots were counted than sent https://t.co/xMd1iOmVPO
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) July 17, 2021
Cyber Ninjas had been backing away from the claim before today’s statement:
Statement from Cyber Ninjas PR firm on the 74,000 votes Maricopa County. https://t.co/REPHnrBR7q pic.twitter.com/dXvdEqSect
— Greg Pollowitz (@GPollowitz) July 18, 2021
Logan doesn’t outright say Cyber Ninjas got it wrong, but that’s where it looks like it’s headed:
Tacit admission from #azaudit lead Doug Logan that 74k ballots were misrepresented. He blames lack of cooperation from @maricopacounty. https://t.co/l5GgMi3EcF
— The AZ – abc15 – Data Guru (@Garrett_Archer) July 23, 2021
Audit team leader Doug Logan confirms that he got his information on the 74k ballots from the EV32 and EV33 reports, which backs up the county's explanation for how he mistakenly believed there was no record of those early ballots being requested by voters. https://t.co/LwG3ofDGGe
— Jeremy Duda (@jeremyduda) July 23, 2021
Logan is basically admitting here that they didn't understand the 74K number but blames the county for not communicating with them.
Twitter, fact checkers and others figured out what this number was within 15-30 minutes of the hearing concluding: https://t.co/Ozu545AuaB https://t.co/c7QzrLPp0p
— Jerod MacDonald-Evoy (@JerodMacEvoy) July 23, 2021
And there’s a new report out tonight claiming that Ken Bennett, a former Secretary of State and the liaison between the auditors and the State Senate, has now been barred from the audit floor after he allegedly shared with a third party that the Cyber Ninjas count of the ballots was incorrect:
The ONE person in the audit with ANY previous high-level involvement with election administration has now been kicked out. Why? Because the new ballot count matched Maricopa County's numbers, not the Ninjas'. The adult has left the room @BennettArizona https://t.co/FUYJmi5P81
— Stephen Richer—Maricopa Cnty Recorder (prsnl acct) (@stephen_richer) July 24, 2021
According to the reporter on the story, Bennett shared this info with a group that’s been critical of the audit:
This story is for subscribers only. @maryjpitzl and I found out earlier this week that Ken Bennett, the Senate rep, had shared initial results from the Senate's new ballot count w/ an outside group that's been critical of the Cyber Ninjas.
He did so without telling the Ninjas.
— Jen Fifield (@JenAFifield) July 24, 2021
Cyber Ninjas says the decision to block Bennett came from State Senate President Karen Fann:
We called Ken about it. We also called @FannKfann. This was yesterday afternoon.
This morning, he's blocked. Cyber Ninjas told us Fann's office made the decision. She didn't respond to our text asking about that.
— Jen Fifield (@JenAFifield) July 24, 2021
But, according to Fann, Bennet still is the liaison:
Fann says Bennett is still the Senate's liaison.
Please read our full story for more – including what these initial results are showing.
— Jen Fifield (@JenAFifield) July 24, 2021
Fann is also getting into it with Republican Stephen Richer, Maricopa County Recorder, who has been a vocal critic of the audit:
Please deal with facts. Whatever your political stripes, please stop airing conspiracy theories or unfounded allegations without doing research. It is irresponsible. Especially from elected leaders. We've built this website to offer facts.https://t.co/eAof5J9xeM
— Stephen Richer—Maricopa Cnty Recorder (prsnl acct) (@stephen_richer) July 23, 2021
Fann responded, asking Richer to please cooperate with the auditors:
Then sit down and talk with us We should be doing this together to answer our constituents questions. Auditors would prefer to work with you instead of fighting to get the items Maricopa county is withholding https://t.co/3HxYrDFAMI
— Karen Fann (@FannKfann) July 23, 2021
Richer, however, has told the auditor to finish it up with what they have and “prepare to defend it in court”:
Maricopa BOS Chairman @jacksellers responds to #azaudit hearing with the same mic drop he did in May.
"Finish your audit and prepare to defend it in court." https://t.co/pXvGm0PcZB
— The AZ – abc15 – Data Guru (@Garrett_Archer) July 15, 2021
And on it goes.
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