According to an initial report, an ongoing, months-long investigation into the handling of the 2020 presidential election in Maricopa County, Arizona, has — although it’s continuing — found no evidence of any criminal activity involved in how the election was run and no evidence that Biden’s win was illegitimate. Instead, initial conclusions from the probe, which is being run by Arizona Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich, focus on familiar — but not criminality-involving — right-wing complaints, such as allegedly lax standards around the verification of signatures submitted with mail-in ballots. The initial report in which these details were featured referred to the claimed issues as “serious vulnerabilities” — but not crimes.
"We live in the greatest constitutional Republic in history. No citizen in our Republic can be a bystander. If we do not stand for our freedom and for our Constitution, we will lose them."
-Vice Chair @RepLizCheney— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) April 7, 2022
Besides the ballot signature concerns, Brnovich’s team also raised worries about the chain of custody for ballots left in drop boxes and the incorporation of privately sourced grant money into the process of running the country’s electoral process. As Brnovich summarized, investigators “have reached the conclusion that the 2020 election in Maricopa County revealed serious vulnerabilities that must be addressed and raises questions about the 2020 election in Arizona.” But again, even a GOP-led investigation with pro-Trump eyes consistently on the state hasn’t produced claims of the sort of systematic fraud that ex-President Trump alleged was behind Biden’s win. Maricopa County officials including Board of Supervisors chair Bill Gates and County Recorder Stephen Richer observed that Brnovich’s initial report featured “no new evidence, nothing that would have changed the results, and nothing that should lead people to question the overall health of our electoral system.” Arizona Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs remarked that “[instead] of simply following the evidence, [Brnovich] speculates. Instead of clarity, he provides conjecture.”
BREAKING: Peter Navarro and Daniel Scavino, Jr. cited for criminal contempt by House of Representatives for defiance of Select Committee subpoenas.
They will be referred to the Department of Justice for prosecution.
— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) April 6, 2022
Maricopa County has been under intense scrutiny since Joe Biden’s win there in the 2020 presidential election. Last year, Republicans in the state Senate launched a remarkably ramshackle audit of the county’s 2020 elections process — the audit was led by a firm called Cyber Ninjas, which had no prior election-auditing experience. Arizona state Senate President Sen. Karen Fann (R) requested an investigation by Brnovich into the findings that Cyber Ninjas produced. As for the details of Brnovich’s report, the Arizona Republic notes that despite the document’s complaints about the apparent short length of time for individual signature checks for mail-in ballots, the report fails to lay out “any kind of standard or guideline for how long a signature check should take.” Neither did the report identify a single ballot accepted despite signature issues that should have led to its rejection. In other words, without real-world evidence of criminal activity or systematic fraud, Brnovich essentially vaguely pointed into the metaphorical fog, potentially trying to formulate something that might back right-wing talking points. It doesn’t matter how he might frame his original intentions — propping up right-wing nonsense is what he was doing here. Read more at this link.
Trump seemed preoccupied w/notion he was losing power in GOP, going on unprompted riff about how everyone, even foreign leaders, wants his backing. He took credit for making Pompeo, DeSantis and Pence and said he is more popular than ever, without proof. https://t.co/G66jAHQhEB
— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) April 7, 2022
