The Republicans walked up to the cliff, looked down, and saw a 1,000-foot drop. Then, they turned and said to others that it was just a little hop. Some of them believed the front-line guy and dove right off landing on their heads only to continue to spout their craziness. Others packed on their parachutes and repeated the lie for the sake of their political futures. That is the state of Arizona’s politicians. But there is one notable and courageous holdout.
Even though he is a Republican, Maricopa County Chairman Jack Sellers wrote a scalding letter to the Senate. He made fun of the “fraudit.” In it, he told the Senate to release the report and be ready to defend it. And he will not give the state Senate Republicans access to the voting equipment.
Originally, the Arizona Senate wanted to do a joint audit with the state’s most populous county. That would have given the audit more credibility regarding accuracy and state rules around audits. The county said no thanks, so the Senate hired an untested company, Cyber Ninjas, that loaded up a truck with ballots and headed off, according to NBC News.
The Board of Supervisors refused to comply. Sellers challenged the Senate:
‘If you haven’t figured out the election in Maricopa County was free, fair , and accurate yet, I’m sure you never will. The reason you haven’t finished your ‘audit’ is because you hired people who have no experience and little understanding of how professional elections are run.’
‘[D]o what you will.’
‘The Board has real work to do and little time to entertain this adventure in never-never land. Please finish whatever it is that you are doing and release whatever it is you are going to release. There was no fraud, there wasn’t an injection of ballots from Asia nor was there a satellite that beamed votes into our election equipment.’
The Senate’s subpoenas were for:
‘[D]ocuments, passwords, security information, changes of voter registration records, signed ballot envelopes or images, documents related to any breaches of the election system, information about changes in voting records, county routers and IP addresses and computer logs from two months before and three months after the election.’
The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office released a letter in tandem with Sellers’ letter, which rejected the subpoenas:
‘One week’s notice is not sufficient time to search for all potentially responsive materials.’
The Board of Supervisors identified 11 objections to those subpoenas:
‘[The audit] was not authorized by a vote of the Senate. it is an abuse of process or designed merely to harass.’
Attorney for Dominion Eric Spencer argued in the letter that the Senate’s decision to return tabulator machines last week to Maricopa County:
‘[The county] clearly extinguished the Arizona Senate’s claimed interest in obtaining Dominion security keys and passwords (which was non-existent to begin with) and rendered the Subpoena moot.’
The Dominion company said:
‘[The company would] seek discovery of all materials related to Cyber Ninjas and other contractors’ copying, review, transfer, storage and any other use of Dominion’s physical and intellectual property.’
As for producing “all routers” involved in the election, Donald Trump mentioned “routers” at least 11 times during his last speech to his followers. It was not clear that he even understood what a router was, though.
The Arizona Senate President Karen Fann (R) released a statement that read.
‘[The senate was] weighing our options for securing access to the routers and passwords. [We will try to be patient and give the County more time to comply as they had requested.’
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