The final draft of the pro-Trump Arizona “audit” election commissioned by the state Republican party was supposed to arrive on Monday. Unfortunately, the firm hired to carry out the so-called review of Maricopa County election results had to convene COVID-19 patients.
“Today we receive a portion of the draft audit audit analysis team report,” Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, a Republican, said in a statement Monday. “The team hoped 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 in COVID-19 and they are quite ill. “
Fann also claimed that outside of the conspiratorial traffic of Logan and others who were ill with coronavirus, the Senate did not receive “images of the Maricopa country ballot envelopes” until last Thursday, and blamed more of the delay on the final report – promised by Monday.
The Senate leader of the Republican Party went on to say that the Senate legal team will meet Wednesday to review its report, and once the Cyber Ninjas present the rest of their draft, the chamber will hold another meeting to see if there is “accuracy, clarity and evidence” of documentation. ”Fann has previously boasted of having been in contact with Trump and Rudy Giuliani about the audit and relying on their support.
Right-wing media and President Donald Trump himself have published this audit for months, promising that the Maricopa County review, which President Joe Biden won by 45,000 votes, would finally prove widespread electoral fraud in the 2020 election .
Trump lost the state with about 10,000 ballots, but he and other MAGA personalities have suggested the audit could turn the state toward him and lead to GOP-led audits in other states to reinstate him in the White House.
Although county officials found no irregularities in several audits after the 2020 presidential election, Arizona Senate Republicans hired Cyber Ninjas and two other companies to do another Maricopa County audit in March .
However, the company had no experience in election audits before Fann took advantage of them to lead the process. In addition, Logan had publicly embraced Trump’s baseless conspiracies that the election was called for Biden and millions of votes were stolen from the former president. In addition, several pro-Trump dark money groups have funded the $ 6 million audit, including a nonprofit organization founded by two hosts of the far-right network One America News, which has often rigged elections in its waves.
Election experts across the political spectrum have denounced the audit as a farce, saying there are “too many flaws in the way this review was conducted to trust it” and cited a number of red flags, such as auditors pursuing “strange conspiracy theories.”