Ruling delays release of Arizona vote audit
PHOENIX — Cyber Ninjas will not need to immediately release records of the company’s review of the 2020 vote count in Arizona’s most populous county.
Arizona Supreme Court Justice Kathryn King on Tuesday put a hold on a lower-court order for the records to be released by next Tuesday while the high court considers an appeal.
Republicans who control the Senate argue the records are not subject to public release because they’re maintained by the Senate’s contractors and legislative immunity applies.
But the Arizona Court of Appeals last week said that was not the case. The court said the main contractor, Florida company Cyber Ninjas, was subject to Arizona’s public-records law because it was performing a core government function that the Senate farmed out.
The records are sought by the watchdog group American Oversight. A Supreme Court hearing is scheduled for Sept. 14.
The unprecedented partisan recount and review of election results in Maricopa County was prompted by former President Donald Trump’s loss in the state and his contention that he lost in Arizona and other battleground states because of fraud.
Senate Republicans issued subpoenas to Maricopa County for all 2020 ballots, the machines that counted them and other data.
Meanwhile, the delivery of the report to Arizona state Senate Republicans was delayed yet again Monday after the Trump supporter hired to lead the effort and several others involved contracted the coronavirus “and are quite sick,” the Senate GOP leader said.
Republican Senate President Karen Fann did not give a date for delivery of the full draft.
It’s the latest delay for the unprecedented review, which has so far taken more than double the 60 days it was originally supposed to take.
Two senior Republican senators are to review the report along with their lawyers and advisers to decide whether the findings are supported by evidence. Fann said anything lacking sufficient backing will be removed.
“We want to see their proof, their documentation, everything, to make sure that the report that goes out is fully accurate,” she said.
Cyber Ninjas, the small cybersecurity consultant with no election experience that Fann hired to run the review, was originally supposed to deliver its findings in May but has pushed back the timeline several times.
Election experts have been highly critical of the review, which Fann launched late last year as Trump and his allies hunted for reasons to block the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.
Election experts say Cyber Ninjas and its subcontracts are biased and incompetent, and they’re using bizarre, ever-changing procedures that could not produce reliable results. Company owner Doug Logan has spread conspiracy theories about the election, and his review has been funded almost entirely by Trump allies active in the “stop the steal” movement.
“Real audits, legitimate audits, are done under a time frame,” Jennifer Morrell, an expert in postelection auditing and a consultant to elections officials, said Monday. “There is a defined start time and stop time. They’re done publicly.”
None of that is the case for the Maricopa County review, Morrell said.
Fann released few details about the covid-19 outbreak among the team leading her review but indicated the symptoms are not mild.
“The team expected to have the full draft ready for the Senate today, but unfortunately Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan and two other members of the five-person audit team have tested positive for COVID-19 and are quite sick,” she said in a statement.
A spokesman for Logan, Rod Thomson, declined to comment.