karen fann sen

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see state GOP wackos, Az

BIG LIE MARICOPA

FRAUDIT CYBERNINJA FINCHEM WALDRON KELLI WARD RUDY

2nd? could stop steal BS have continued w/o fraudit?

CLETA?

ginni emailled?

ALEC

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ref 2

cyber Ninjas' ties to Trump during Arizona election 'audit' revealed in messages

Ryan Randazzo Robert Anglen

Arizona Republic

and

Jan. 26, 2023

Former President Donald Trump publicly kept his distance from the review of Maricopa County's 2020 election. But inside Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, his influence loomed over critical aspects of the "audit," according to messages sent and received by the man leading the ballot recount.

New records show Trump received direct updates from people at the coliseum, his allies pressured the lead contractor on when to report findings, and that contractor asked people close to the former president if he could help pay for it. This all happened as leaders of the state Senate publicly denied Trump had any involvement in their effort.

While messages from those working on the audit indicate they intentionally kept the president at arm's length to avoid the appearance of his influence, behind the scenes they sought Trump's approval — and money.

In April 2021, four days before the election review began, Cyber Ninjas founder Doug Logan used a private messaging system to discuss taking a donation from Trump and his team surreptitiously.

"I told them there was no way I could take funds directly," he said in the chat.

Once the audit concluded and the now-defunct Cyber Ninjas was millions of dollars in debt, Logan would lament that Trump never did directly fund his work.

"It's my understanding that our underfunded status is known all the way up to 45," Logan wrote to a subcontractor in a conversation about how to pay everyone. "Never talked with him, but I've been told the message has been received."

Presenters of the report on the election audit, from left, Ben Cotton, the founder of CyFIR, Doug Logan, the CEO of Cyber Ninjas and Randy Pullen, the audit spokesman, look on before the start of the presentation to the Arizona lawmakers in the Senate chambers of the Arizona Capitol in Phoenix on Sept. 24, 2021. David Wallace/The Republic

Logan has released tens of thousands of personal messages he sent to supporters and subcontractors involved in the audit in response to ongoing lawsuits from The Arizona Republic and a left-leaning watchdog group based in Washington, D.C., called American Oversight.

The messages reveal for the first time how Logan worked with Trump allies to help finance the work, shape media coverage and manage day-to-day operations as teams worked to hand count 2.1 million ballots cast by county voters.

Logan for months fought the release of his personal messages, which The Republic first sought through state Public Records Law. But after a $50,000-a-day sanction for noncompliance and exhausting all appeals, Logan’s lawyer has turned over many — but not all — text and Signal messages Logan sent and received while working on the audit.

Logan on Tuesday declined to comment on the pleas for money he made through extensive communication with Christina Bobb, a former Trump lawyer and conservative broadcaster who served as a go-between for the former president.

Arizona Senate Republicans hired Cyber Ninjas to recount and inspect ballots, and the so-called "audit" confirmed President Joe Biden’s win in the state and made no concrete findings of wrongdoing by election officials. But for months it served as a marketing tool for politicians who campaigned on unproven accusations that the election was compromised.

[

200 PhotosVIEW FULL GALLERY

Arizona Senate audits Maricopa County election resultsBallots from the 2020 presidential election were sent to the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix in April 2021.](https://archive.ph/o/XXodN/https://www.azcentral.com/picture-gallery/news/politics/elections/2021/04/22/tabulation-machines-shipped-senate-election-audit/7312790002/)

Senate Republicans said from the outset that Trump did not push for the audit and did not provide any assistance for it, financial or otherwise.

Former Senate President Karen Fann, a Prescott Republican who hired Cyber Ninjas, repeatedly said the effort was not done to put Trump back in the White House.

"This absolutely has nothing to do with Trump," Fann wrote in an email to a constituent days after the audit began in 2021. "The election cannot be overturned. This audit is ONLY about election integrity, answering their questions, and hopefully proving there was nothing wrong with the election."

She reacted with surprise Jan. 19 to the newly released messages when contacted about them by a reporter. When the audit began, she said, she did not know the extent to which Trump allies were involved.

"I did not know," she said. "Since then I have now connected the dots. ... Obviously, in the subsequent months, it was very apparent."

Trump was watching, chatting with broadcaster

Several references in Logan’s messages indicate people in Trump’s circle were closely watching Maricopa County and reporting back to the former president, who they sometimes referred to as “45.” Trump was the nation's 45th president.

Logan in the messages discussed Trump’s interest in the work with Bobb, who was given broad access to the election review while working as a personality for the right-wing OAN Network.

Former One America News Network anchor Christina Bobb speaks at a Blake Masters election integrity event on April 30, 2022, in Chandler. Megan Mendoza/The Republic

Bobb worked in the Trump administration as an appointee in the Department of Homeland Security. She left in early 2020 to join OAN. But after Trump lost the 2020 election, Bobb volunteered to help his legal team challenge the results and was with his team until the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, according to her testimony to the congressional committee that investigated the attack.

Shortly after Trump's loss, she helped coordinate a meeting in Arizona at which Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani suggested the election was compromised.

Bobb continued to work as a personality for OAN and began covering the Arizona audit, where she messaged frequently with Logan. She also helped raise money for the audit through her connections to Trump and his organization.

Other media were restricted to a small press box in Veterans Memorial Coliseum — when they could get into the building at all.

Bobb at one point told Logan she would ask the Trump organization for recommendations for a lawyer to help with the audit because Logan didn't like the lawyer recommended to him at the time.

On June 19, 2021, Logan asked Bobb if Trump would pressure Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward to donate some of the money she was raising off the audit to the actual work, which he said she had not done. Bobb said Trump liked Ward because she was an "outspoken media personality" and was unlikely to push her to fund the audit.

In this series of messages, Doug Logan talks about audit funding with Christina Bobb. Logan, founder of Cyber Ninjas, turned over tens of thousands of personal messages in response to lawsuits. Text Messages Provided To Arizona Senate By Doug Logan

Logan followed up, asking if Trump could press people to donate to the nonprofits set up to fund the audit.

"I will ask him. He shies away from publicly supporting the audit. I will raise the money issue with him next time we talk," Bobb responded.

Then on June 25, Bobb discussed funding with Logan, telling him that a wire would come from “Sidney" from Defending the Republic. Trump lawyer Sidney Powell raised money after his loss through a nonprofit by that name.

“I reached out to her and she didn’t take my call. I’ll try again. If she doesn’t answer, I’ll have Trump call,” Bobb wrote to Logan.

Months later, Logan would report that Powell's group donated $550,000 to his work.

Bobb said in a recent interview with The Republic that she didn’t officially join the Trump team until April 2022. But she did communicate with Trump about the audit.

“I knew that he was very interested in the audit,” she said. “I was never officially communicating anything on behalf of anybody.”

Often, Trump just wanted more detail than what she had shared in her news stories, Bobb said.

She said she never received funding for the audit from Trump or any organization affiliated with him.

“He was not involved in funding. I did ask. It was a no,” she said.

Messages sought updates on counting, funding

In May 2021, as the work passed the one-month mark, Logan messaged with a man named Patrick Weaver who worked on the audit. Weaver was affiliated with The America Project, one of the groups that funded Logan’s work beyond the $150,000 paid by the state.

“Any total count numbers you can give me for Abby to give to Trump?” Weaver wrote to Logan on May 25, 2021. The identity of "Abby" is unclear.

In this message, Patrick Weaver asks Doug Logan for an audit update to provide Donald Trump. Logan, founder of Cyber Ninjas, turned over tens of thousands of personal messages in response to lawsuits. Text Messages Provided To Arizona Senate By Doug Logan

Logan responded with an update on the counting.

In July, Logan messaged with Phil Waldron, a retired Army colonel who worked with President Trump’s chief of staff after his 2020 defeat to concoct ways Trump might stay in office.Waldron said Trump had planned to send $1 million to the audit, but Logan said he had not received it.“Payment – 1 mil – supposedly Kurt talked to trump and they got 1 mil for you,” Waldron wrote to Logan. The identity of "Kurt" is unclear.

How we got here:An Arizona election audit timeline

Fann unaware of some connections to Trump

Fann acknowledged that Bobb and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani "called several times" before the audit began as part of an effort to call the election into question. But said she did not "know anything else that was going on in the background" of the ballot count.

Arizona needed the audit to assure voters there was no chicanery in the numbers, Fann said.

"My job was to make sure we had an honest election in Arizona," she said.

She confirmed Trump called her "a couple of times" to discuss the audit as it unfolded. She said she didn't recall him trying to exert influence over the process, but rather he asked about it.

"He told me, 'Thank you for doing this,'" she said.

Even as Bobb reported on and raised funds for the election review — and her network was selected to livestream camera footage from the coliseum — Fann said she believed Bobb was acting only in her capacity as a news host, not a Trump surrogate.

Senate President Karen Fann takes notes with a pen during a meeting about the audit the Arizona State Senate in Phoenix on July 15, 2021. Joseph Cooke/The Republic

'Is God really going to come through?'

Logan's lawyer has redacted several messages between him and Bobb sent during this time, despite clear orders from Arizona courts to turn over everything. Still, some of the unredacted messages show Bobb held out her connection to Trump as a way to influence Logan, who was desperate for money.

"Is God really going to come through in funding this thing?" Logan wrote to Bobb on June 26, 2021.

She replied: "I don't know what he's going to do, but I know in the end we win. I don't know how we get there. But yes, in the end it will all workout."

Logan told her that day he needed about $4.8 million more to complete the audit.

"I'll raise with 45 again next time we talk," Bobb replied.

The next day, Bobb messaged Logan asking if the Senate would issue a news release with his preliminary findings. Contractors had finished counting and inspecting ballots at the coliseum a few days before. It would be months before Logan made a final report.

"I'm getting a lot of concerned people calling me saying the audit will lose credibility if there isn't some type of announcement tomorrow," she wrote.

In this text message, Christina Bobb asks Doug Logan about a potential announcement about the audit. Text Messages Provided To Arizona Senate By Doug Logan

Logan didn't want to issue preliminary findings. He pushed back.

"That wouldn't be the case if there wasn't so much fake news that a number was expected tomorrow," he told the reporter.

Bobb lashed out.

"I strongly suggest you don't blame me for fake news," Bobb wrote. "I STRONGLY suggest that."

Bobb didn't pretend to be an independent observer about the ballot review.

"Remember we're on the same side," she wrote to Logan. "If you want to fight me, we both will lose."

Bobb said in an interview Jan. 19 she was pressuring Logan as a reporter, not on behalf of Trump.

“They needed to release the numbers. I remember that,” Bobb said. “I was holding him to the same standard that I was holding the election officials. Why don’t we have a result on election night? My personal opinion is when you are done counting, if you don’t release the numbers that looks sketchy. I’m not accusing anybody of doing anything wrong, but it raises a lot of questions.”

Asked whether she thought Logan did a good job on his final report, she said, “I don’t have a comment on that. I like Doug Logan. I think he’s great.”

:{:{Hobbs defends plan for state-funded travel for migrants[}:

Fann: 'We did not do this for Trump'

Fann sought to distance herself from Logan's fundraising efforts. She said it was clear when Logan said he needed to raise up to $5 million to pay for the audit that the money wasn't going to come from the Senate.

She said she did not know about any outreach to Trump or any other potential sources. Fann said her involvement with finances stopped with the Senate's authorization of audit expenses, which included $150,000 for Cyber Ninjas.

The audit has cost taxpayers so far about $5 million, the bulk of which came from Maricopa County. That includes legal fees it spent fighting with the Senate over access to voting information and the cost of new tabulation machines needed once the audit was completed.

Fann said the Senate's audit was a way to stand up for voters.

"We did this to do the right thing," she said. "We did this to answer questions. We did not do this for Trump."

Republic reporter Justin Price contributed to this article.

Reach reporter Ryan Randazzo at ryan.randazzo@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4331. Follow him on Twitter @UtilityReporter.

Reach reporter Robert Anglen atrobert.anglen@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8694. Follow him on Twitter @robertanglen.

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5 26 Talk:Karen Fann - Wikipedia

The article states that the business is "very successful," but cites only a campaign website in support of that statement. If the matter is to be discussed in an encyclopedia, it should be done in the context whether the President of Arizona Senate having an interest in a business that provides road signage is a permissible conflict of interest.174.17.137.81 (talk) 16:31, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Repeated vandalism by IP editor

(Snooganssnoogans talk), (Therequiembellishere talk), (SuperHamster talk), (PohranicniStraze talk) IP Editor 172.58.222.238, probably located in the Worcester-Boston, Massachusetts area, vandalized this article, completely and repeatedly reversing five substantial identical restoration edits by four long-time editors within six hours. The only prior WP edits from that IP address were to the article on former Devin Nunes and Trump administration staffer Kash Patel on January 9th, and I think probably not done by the same person. Can this page be protected? Activist (talk) 22:13, 19 May 2021 (UTC)...

===

5 26

Karen Fann (born September 1, 1954)^[1] is a former Republican member of the Arizona Senate, representing Arizona Legislative District 1.^[2][3] Fann became President of the Arizona Senate in 2019, and served until 2023.

After Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election and Donald Trump and other Republicans made false claims of electoral fraud, Fann ordered an audit of the election results in Maricopa County. The audit was widely seen as an illegitimate "effort to undermine valid election results".^[4] Fann announced in November 2021 that she would not run for re-election in 2022.^[5]

Career

Fann is the second female Senate President in the history of Arizona.^[6] She was first elected in November 2016 to represent Legislative District 1, which covers 8,000 square miles throughout Yavapai County and portions of Maricopa County. She previously served this district from 2011 to 2016 as a State Representative. Fann moved to Prescott at the age of four and has been a lifelong Republican. She continues to serve as a precinct committeeman and is a member of the Rotary International and Elks. She currently serves as the vice chair of both the Finance Committee and the Transportation and Technology Committee and as a member of the Natural Resources, Energy and Water Committee.[citation ^needed]

Fann's previous experience includes: 2019–2020 Arizona Senate Chairman, Rules; 2002–2009 Town of Chino Valley Mayor and Councilman; 2007–2009 BQAZ Statewide Transportation Board; 2005–2009 Chairman and Board, Central Yavapai Metropolitan Planning Organization (CYMPO); 2006–2009 Chairman and Board, Upper Verde River Watershed Protection Coalition; 2005–2008 Governors Rural Water Legislative Study Committee; 2002–2007 and 1992–1994 Northern Council of Governments (NACOG); 1992–1995 Prescott City Mayor Pro Tem and Councilman.

2020 Presidential Election Audit

On December 12, 2020, Gretchen Jacobs, one of Arizona's most powerful and well paid lobbyists, sent a message to White House staffer Stephanie Grisham that she had spoken with Fann and “asked her what would cause her to withhold the electors” needed to certify the results.^[7] According to Jacobs, Fann told her “if we could prove fraud — that would be a game-changer.” Jacobs then asked Grisham if she could help find $104,000 to hire a political consultant to work on finding evidence of fraud. “I can’t bear that we would lose this over not having $100k to prove what we know is fraud,” Jacobs wrote to Grisham.^[7][8][9] Two days later, on December 14, 2020, Jacobs attended the White House Christmas Party with Donald Trump.^[10] The following day, on December 15, 2020, Fann she and Senator Eddie Farnsworth were issuing subpoenas for the scanned ballot images and a forensic audit of all voting machines used in the 2020 election.^[11]

In April 2021, Fann ordered an audit of the election results in Maricopa County, hiring a firm that was founded by a pro-Trump conspiracy theorist who promoted false claims of fraud.^[12]

:{Under Fann, the Republican-controlled Senate invoked claims of fraud and used its subpoena power to demand the county turn over all its 2.1 million ballots and related presidential election materials to the Senate. In response, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors provided a massive volume of documents to the Senate, but Republican senators persisted in making fraud claims despite those having been rejected by the Arizona Supreme Court and other courts.^[13]

Multiple previous checks, including tests of ballot tabulating machines and software both before and after the election, as well as a hand count of a ballot sample, all confirmed the county properly administered the election.^[14][15] When it refused, Fann sought a resolution to hold the Maricopa County Board in contempt, which failed when Republican Paul Boyer resisted Fann's pressure to change his vote and joined all Democrats in opposition.^[13]}:

Maricopa County Supervisor Steve Gallardo, the only Democrat on the five-member county board, expressed concern that the efforts of state senate Republicans to question the election outcome could cause violence.^[13] The Arizona Secretary of State, Katie Hobbs, criticized the audit for lax chain of custody procedures, calling it "a significant departure from standard best practices."^[16] After her criticism of its procedures resulted in her receiving death threats, the Arizona Department of Public Safety assigned a security detail to guard Hobbs and her staff.^[17]

Fann made a false allegation, later amplified by Trump in a May 15 post on his blog, that Maricopa County election officials deleted the voter database after the election. Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican who oversees elections, tweeted that Trump's post was "unhinged", noting he was looking at the database on his computer at that moment. Richer added, "We can’t indulge these insane lies any longer." The auditors later acknowledged the database had not been deleted.^[18][19]

A Colorado expert, working for Hobbs' office, cited haphazard procedures and the absence of effective security characterized the audit process.^[20] Despite the resistance and the temporary loss of the arena site it used, Fann said the audit will continue.^[21] The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) sent a letter to Fann that expressed concerns that the audit could violate federal laws regarding ballot custody and voter intimidation.^[22][23] In response to the DOJ letter and the public backlash, Fann scrapped plans to canvass voters at their home addresses to confirm their voter registration information.^[24][25] The Maricopa County Board, of which four of five members are Republicans, sharply rebutted Fann's claims in a 12-page letter.^[26][27] The board also urged Fann to close the audit, which she refused.^[28]

:{On May 17, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors held a hearing to dispute her allegations of wrongdoing by county officials. Republican board chairman Jack Sellers stated that the allegations were actually due to the incompetence of the auditors and accused Fann of an "attempt at legitimatizing a grift disguised as an audit."^[29][30] After consulting with the United States Department of Homeland Security and the Election Assistance Commission about the machines used to tabulate the ballots that were turned over in response to the Senate subpoena, Hobbs concluded that the equipment had been compromised and became impossible for the county alone to recertify for future use.^[31]

While they were in the care and custody of the Senate's contractors, the chain of custody procedures that are required to guarantee their post-audit integrity were not maintained, causing an inability to use them without lessor confirmation that their performance could be recertified. The county spent over $20,000 to lease voting machines in order to conduct two local elections while the contractor possessed those that had been subpoenaed, and the costs of recertifying the surrendered machines upon their return would be in the six-figure range.^[31]}:

As a result of the audit, Maricopa County had to spend nearly $3 million to replace voting equipment because the equipment had been tainted by the company auditing the equipment.^[32]

A preliminary report on the results of the audit, despite the expenditure of some six million dollars raised from Trump supporters determined to overturn the election, found no evidence of fraud.^[33]

Fann received an FBI subpoena in June 2022 relating to an investigation into Trump's efforts to pressure state officials after the election. The Director of Communications for Arizona Senate Republicans characterized the subpoena as "part of the Biden Administration's political theatrics as they look into 'January 6'."^[34]

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an 2 23 maya

Former Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, left office earlier this year without sharing findings from an investigation into Maricopa County's 2020 election seeking evidence of fraud, which he spearheaded, The Washington Post reports.

Now, per Arizona's KPNX News, the state's newly-elected Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, has released the findings from last year Brnovich failed to provide, provinghis allegations of fraud to be untrue.

A memo from September 2022 states, "These allegations were not supported by any factual evidence when researched by our office. Some of the information was mischaracterized... while some were wholly false."

According to The Post, the former attorney general refused to "respond to questions about his conduct of the probe, his decision not to release additional documents or differences between his public statements and his office's private findings."

"The people of Arizona had a right to know this information before the 2022 election," said Mayes. “Maricopa County election officials had a right to know that they were cleared of wrongdoing. And every American had a right to know that the 2020 election in Arizona, which in part decided the presidency, was conducted accurately and fairly."

Two years prior, The Post reports:

Brnovich quickly affirmed then-President Trump’s loss in Arizona in November 2020, angering fellow Republicans. And he went on to resist Trump’s efforts to overturn the vote. Yet he flirted with claims of fraud as he courted GOP support over the subsequent two years, trumpeting his interim report on a far-right radio show and saying, 'It’s frustrating for all of us, because I think we all know what happened in 2020.'

Days leading up to the 2022 midterm election, according to The Post, Brnovich suffered defeat in the Senate primary a few months before, and suddenly started to criticize officials "who denied Trump's defeat, calling them 'clowns' engaged in a 'giant grift.'"

Mayes said her predecessor's investigation was carried out by nearly 60 investigators, who "spent more than 10,000 hours examining claims of irregularities, malfeasance and fraud," according to the findings.

Although the staff members received criticism regarding their "handling and verification of ballots," they collectively sent a letter to the former president of theSenate Karen FAnn, writing "We can report that there are problematic systemwide issues that relate to early ballot handling and verification." However, they also noted, "we did not uncover any criminality or fraud having been committed in this area during the 2020 general election."

According to The Post, Brnovich never disclosed the full findings, leaving those suspicious of his accusations with questions and concerns.

A spokesperson for the attorney's general office, Richie Taylor, told The Post "records released this week represent a fraction of the thousands of pages produced by investigators and attorneys during the investigation, including additional material from drafts of reports and interviews and correspondence with witnesses and election officials."

Taylor says "Mayes's staff is reviewing those documents and is redacting sensitive information before making them public in the coming months."

The Washington Post's full report is available at this link (subscription required). KPNX News' report is here.

===

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AM O

On Tuesday, in response to American Oversight’s public records lawsuit, the Arizona Senate released thousands of pages of records related to its partisan “audit” of Maricopa County’s 2020 election results. The document production comes on thecourt-ordered deadline of Aug. 31.

Included in the documents is information regarding audit payments as well as emails and text messages that audit officials and legislators exchanged with outside parties, including prominent Republicans, election conspiracy theorists and activists, members of Trump’s legal team, and others. American Oversight is still reviewing the contents of the records and will update this page with any additional findings. We are also still processing the documents, and will make them available on our website as soon as possible.

Prominent Republicans

According to an accompanying privilege log (which lists records that had been withheld because of legislative and other privileges), Senate President Karen Fann exchanged multiple texts with U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar in the spring regarding the investigation and its vendors. The new records also contain August emails between Fann and a member of Gosar’s staff regarding the release of the contractors’ final report. (Gosar appeared at the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters seeking to prevent the certification of the election.)

Records previously obtained by American Oversight included an April 22 email from Bruce Ash, the former national committeeman of the Arizona Republican Party, to Tommy Hicks, the co-chair of the Republican National Committee, in which Ash asked that the RNC help finance the defense against Democrats’ legal challenges to the “audit.” The latest records include more instances of audit allies attempting to get help from the national party: On July 17, audit spokesman Randy Pullen sent a text to Ash saying, “Need guns, lawyers, and money. Have any?”

The new records also indicate that Pullen was in touch with Reince Priebus, Trump’s first chief of staff and the former head of both the national and the Wisconsin Republican Party, as far back as December, before Pullen was officially involved in the “audit.” That month, Pullen texted Priebus to tell him about the potential for a “Forensic audit,” and in March asked Priebus for “suggestions on election audit firms.” (Priebus said he would check.) Another text from Pullen to Ash, sent on March 8, appears to reference Priebus: “I texted Reince and ask if he would like to help out on the audit,” Pullen said, then followed up to say they were speaking later that morning.

Conspiracy Theorists

The privilege log also indicates that top “audit” officials — including Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan, Senate Liaison Ken Bennett, and spokesman Randy Pullen — exchanged a number of emails with Shiva Ayyadurai, an election conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine activist whose Twitter account was suspended back in February.

The records released by the Senate include a signed contract between Cyber Ninjas and a “Dr. Shiva,” a name Ayyadurai goes by among his followers. The contract is dated Aug. 3, 2021, and was sent to the United Liberty Coalition, a Phoenix-based group of supporters of former President Trump.

During a recent interview on Steve Bannon’s podcast, Reince Priebus reportedly said that the Wisconsin Assembly would be bringing in Ayyadurai to assist in its own partisan investigation of the 2020 election.

Another conspiracy theorist who appears in the Arizona Senate’s documents is Gail Golec, who has adopted the language of the QAnon conspiracy in her election-undermining activism. According to the records, Golec exchanged text messages with Senate President Karen Fann on Aug. 24 following the news that Logan and other members of the Cyber Ninjas team had contracted Covid-19. Golec recommended that Logan visit a site to purchase the livestock drug ivermectin. (Text messages indicate that upon hearing the news, Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward also told Fann that she hoped Logan had “gotten some Ivermectin and Zithromax.”) Golec also exchanged texts with Bennett in April, in which Golec said that the National Guard needed to be deployed to protect the audit from Black Lives Matter and antifa.

The records also appear to reference conspiracy theorist Bobby Piton, who according to records previously obtained by American Oversight had emailed Arizona legislators in December, calling for a vote recount. Those previous records also contain emails in which both Bennett and Pullen responded to outside inquiries by saying that they didn’t know who Piton was or whether he was involved.

The new records contain texts exchanged by Pullen and Liz Harris, a former Republican state legislative candidate who has been organizing direct canvassing operations that experts warn could amount to voter intimidation. On Dec. 16, Harris forwarded to Pullen a Dec. 16 text from “Bobby” requesting multiple decades’ worth of detailed voter information from all 15 counties in Arizona, not just Maricopa. Harris’s canvassing operations have recently been in the news again, with Harris denying any formal connections to the audit.

Trump Lawyers and Allies

In December, according to records previously obtained by American Oversight, One America News reporter Christina Bobb — who later began raising money for the “audit” — provided Fann with purported “evidence” of voter fraud, writing that Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani had “asked me to send you these declarations.” The newly released records include a group text from March 31 involving Fann and Bobb, with Giuliani also included, in which Fann passes along a document with a title that began “Pres. Fann audit hiring.”

Another Trump lawyer, Cleta Mitchell, was also looped in on a number of communications, including an Aug. 2 email chain started by Scott Sigman, a Pennsylvania attorney who appears to be handling the issuing of checks related to the “audit.” Sigman emailed Mitchell, Logan, Pullen, and Thomas Datwyler (the treasurer of a group called the American Voting Rights Foundation) seeking signatures for payments.

Pullen also received a text on April 22 from Jeff DeWit, the former CFO of NASA who previously served as Arizona treasurer, in which DeWit said he was preparing to send $175,000 to Guardian Defense Fund, the organization set up as a legal defense fund for Gosar, state Rep. Mark Finchem, and former state Rep. Anthony Kern following their attendance at the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally. DeWit asked Pullen, who was the fund’s treasurer, where to send the money; Pullen responded that “200 would be better but take what I can get.”

The next week, DeWit asked Pullen about a group called Fund The Audit, which Pullen said was being funded by former Overstock CEO (and current election conspiracist) Patrick Byrne. DeWit asked whether the group was “ok to donate to,” adding, “Trump asking.” Pullen said yes, and that it had raised $1.2 million so far.

In May, Pullen asked whether DeWit was familiar with Jenna Ellis, a lawyer who had worked with Giuliani on Trump’s farfetched legal challenges to the election. And on July 19, Pullen asked DeWit to call him, saying that “arpaio has some information for 45” — likely a reference to former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and further suggesting that DeWit was relaying messages to the former president.

Audit Costs

The Senate originally provided $150,000 for the election “audit,” but in the months since the total cost ballooned to at least $6 million thanks to outside donations. Records included in Tuesday’s document production reveal how quickly the price tag rose: Among other payments, more than $400,000 went to private security contractor Law Enforcement Specialists, and the American Voting Rights Foundation sent $500,000 went to contractor CyFIR and $250,000 to StratTech Solutions. Another email from early August involving Sigman, Mitchell, and representatives of Wake Technology Services Inc., which left the operation in May, shows that AVRF wired $250,000 to Sigman to cover costs.

Other Records

Cyber Ninjas was hired by the state Senate in the spring, and questions remain about how the firm was selected, given its lack of election experience and previous statements by Logan in which he advanced conspiracy theories about voting machines. The privilege log indicates that communication between Logan and Fann began as early as Feb. 5, and texts released by the Senate on Tuesday include one from March 17 between Fann and a lobbyist who refers to “Doug.”

The newly released records also reveal that the deference to conspiracy theories and false allegations of voter fraud evident in Fann’s post-election communications has continued into recent months: On Aug. 23, Fann forwarded to Bennett, Pullen, and Logan an article about a report on missing Wisconsin ballots.

Finally, the new records also suggest that audit officials were in touch with former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who was hired to run the bogus election investigation initiated by Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos. On Aug. 7, Pullen texted a “Justice Michael G” with “Three big political points.” In response, the recipient wrote, “these are helpful fundings [sic].” The week before, Christina Bobb had asked Fann if she could share her contact information with Gableman; Fann replied, “Absolutely of course.”

Litigation

[LEGAL DOCS]

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===

https://www.americanoversight.org/investigation/the-arizona-senates-partisan-audit-of-maricopa-county-election-results

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Baseless lies about widespread voter fraud and false allegations of a “stolen” 2020 presidential election have inflamed mistrust in democracy and provided the political fuel for hundreds of proposals across the country to enact new barriers to voting. These efforts to undermine the election have been especially conspicuous in Arizona, where voter fraud conspiracies are behind a state Senate–led push to conduct a partisan “audit” of votes cast in Maricopa County, which was won by President Joe Biden.

The audit was not based on any evidence of widespread voter fraud, in Maricopa County or elsewhere. In fact, an independent audit in February 2021 confirmed that the ballots in the county had been tabulated accurately and that there were no irregularities with the election equipment or software.

After the 2020 election, Senate President Karen Fann and then-Arizona Sen. Eddie Farnsworth issued subpoenas to Maricopa County for the 2.1 million ballots as well as election machines and other materials. Those subpoenas were re-upped in January 2021 by Fann and state Sen. Warren Petersen, who replaced Farnsworth as chair of the Judiciary Committee. County officials argued that turning over the ballots would violate state law, but in late February a judge ruled that the county must turn them over, leading to confusion when the Senate did not have a place lined up to safely store them.

On March 31, 2021, Fann announced that the audit team would be led by the firm Cyber Ninjas. The founder of Cyber Ninjas, Doug Logan, had repeatedly circulated lies that the 2020 election was rigged and vocally supported the “Stop the Steal” movement, including by attacking Dominion Voting Systems and retweeting conspiracy theories. Moreover, the statement of work signed by Cyber Ninjas indicated that the company planned to engage in direct contact with Arizona voters, the subject of a legal challenge from the group Protect Democracy. Records later obtained by American Oversight in June contained a report dated March 1 that indicated that a group called the Citizens’ Non-Partisan Grassroots project had canvassed more than 3,000 homes in Maricopa and Pima Counties; in early May, the Justice Department warned that such canvassing could violate federal law.

Arizona supporters of former President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims that the election was stolen from him had been stoking fears about voter fraud for months in an attempt to undermine a valid democratic election. On Nov. 30, 2020, Rudy Giuliani and several Arizona lawmakers — including state Rep. Mark Finchem, one of the leaders of the effort to overturn the state’s election results — held an unofficial “hearing”in Phoenix in which participants made unsubstantiated allegations about the election’s integrity. Trump supporters also submitted a phony Arizona electoral vote certificate to Congress, a copy of which was obtained by American Oversight along with illegitimate certificates from six other states.

Other records that American Oversight obtained in June 2021 contained emails revealingFann’s frequent contact with Giulianiin the weeks after the election, including one message to a constituent in late December in which Fann said she had received “a personal call from President Trump thanking us for pushing to prove any fraud.”

Like Trump’s hollow voter-fraud commission and the voter-fraud task forces created in advance of the 2020 election, the state Senate’s “audit” of Maricopa County votes was yet another official action that was purportedly about election “integrity” but in reality served a narrow political agenda — in this case, the continuation of the “Big Lie” that the election was stolen.

Recognizing that aggressive oversight was needed, American Oversight filed public records requests for the audit-related communications ofFann, Petersen, Farnsworth, and Finchem— including with Trump attorneys, Maricopa elections officials, and contractors like Cyber Ninjas — as well as for copies of any contracts with companies like Cyber Ninjas to provide services relevant to the audit.

On May 19, 2021, we filed a lawsuit after the Arizona Senate failed to release many of the requested records. Over the summer, multiple courts ruled in American Oversight’s favor and ordered the Senate to release the documents — including files in the possession of Cyber Ninjas — to the public.

In January 2022, the court ordered Logan to sit for a deposition, during which he doubled down on his refusal to release his company’s documents, maintaining that the records were not public.Logan also reported that Cyber Ninjas had shut down and laid off its employees. In February, the Arizona Supreme Court agreed to hear the state Senate’s appeal of lower court rulings rejecting the Senate’s overly broad claim of legislative privilege, which it had attempted to use to justify withholding records.

In May, the Arizona Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the state Senate’s appeal of lower court rulings rejecting the Senate’s overly broad claim of legislative privilege, which it had attempted to use to justify withholding records. That same month, Cyber Ninjas began turning over to the Senate documents in its possession. The records contained service agreements for subcontractors that revealed more details about the high cost of the “audit,” as well as communications highlighting the significant role played by prominent election deniers in recruiting “audit” volunteers.

Through the course of our investigation, we’ve also obtained records further evidencing the review’s roots in efforts to overturn the 2020 results as well as the involvement of election conspiracy theorists in the planning and execution of the “audit.” Records also detail its connections to Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — two states that have since launched their own partisan election reviews — and show how many of the same activists and Big Lie proponents are working across state lines.

While tens of thousands of pages have been produced in compliance with the court orders, thousands more have not yet been released. American Oversight is continuing to pursue the release of all of the requested “audit” records.

SEE BELOW

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am oversight docs

https://www.americanoversight.org/document/nara-records-regarding-invalid-elector-slates

https://www.americanoversight.org/investigation/the-alternate-electors-plot-to-overturn-the-2020-election

In March 2021, American Oversight obtained copies of phony electoral vote certificates signed and submitted to the National Archives and Congress by supporters of former President Trump in seven swing states that had gone for Joe Biden: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The false certificates were part of a scheme to prevent the congressional certification of Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, 2021, in which Trump allies, pointing to lies about widespread voter fraud, sought to present the signatories as “alternate” slates of electors.

The documents drew renewed attention in January 2022 after they were covered by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and Politico. The Justice Department said it was investigating the fake certificates, and the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, which had also been looking into the matter, issued subpoenas to the individuals listed as “chairperson” and “secretary” of each group of alternate electors. The next month, the committee issued six additional subpoenas to connected individuals.

A now-infamous memo prepared by Trump-allied lawyer John Eastman and titled “January 6 scenario” indicated that the fake certificates were part of a six-step schemethat relied on Pence throwing out the valid electors from “7 states [that] have transmitted dual slates of electors.” In February 2022, the New York Times reported that two weeks after the election, Jim Troupis, a lawyer for the Trump campaign in Wisconsin, had received a memo setting out the strategy to overturn Trump’s loss by installing “alternate” electors in states Trump lost. According to the Times, that memo was used by Eastman and other Trump-allied lawyers as they devised the scheme.

In March, a federal judge ruled that it was “more likely than not”that Trump and Eastman had “corruptly attempted” to obstruct the Jan. 6 congressional certification, and ordered Eastman to produce more than 100 emails he had fought to keep from House investigators. More than a year and a half after the election, Eastman is still attempting to shield his communication records from the House select committee.

The fake certificates were also referenced in a draft letterprepared by Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark in December 2020 that falsely stated the department was investigating “various irregularities” in the election and would have instructed Georgia lawmakers to convene a special session to consider “issues pertaining to the appointment of presidential electors.” That same month, Trump had plotted to oust acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and replace him with Clark, a loyalist who was willing to use the department to elevate Trump’s voter-fraud myth.

In a lawsuit we filed against the ArizonaSenate seeking records related to the partisan “audit” of Maricopa County’s 2020 election, we obtained documents that show Kelly Townsend, then state senator-elect, asked former Vice President Mike Pence not to accept Arizona’s valid electoral slate during the congressional certification on Jan. 6. We also obtained and published memos concerning the appointment of electors that were sent to legislative leaders in Wisconsin and Arizona in the weeks following Trump’s loss.

The fake electoral certificates are a critical piece of the coordinated, multi-state effort to subvert the will of American voters. Since obtaining copies of the bogus certificates, American Oversight has sent follow-up requests for the communications of the false electors with Trump allies and false electors in other states. In several states, we are still seeking communications between signers of the phony elector slates and proponents of Trump’s Big Lie.

updates news Roundup: The ‘Wild/Creative’ Fake Electors Scheme

July 29, 2022

“Kind of wild/creative” — that’s how a Trump-allied lawyer, in an early December 2020 email, characterized the scheme to submit fake electoral certificates in an attempt to overturn the election results.

In the Documents: New Details About the Origins of the Arizona Senate’s Discredited Election ‘Audit’

March 7, 2022

Further review of records obtained by American Oversight in our investigation of the “audit” of Maricopa County’s 2020 election reveal a letter from a state senator to then-Vice President Pence asking that he not certify Biden’s victory.

Legislative Leaders in Arizona, Wisconsin Were Sent Memos Regarding the Ability of State Lawmakers to Alter Selection of Electors Following 2020 Election

February 1, 2022

The memos, obtained by American Oversight, suggest that in November 2020, Arizona Senate President Karen Fann and Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos sought legal advice about whether legislators had the power to alter the selection or actions of electors after the election had taken place.

December 2020 Emails to:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}::{ Arizona :(style="background-color:#ff9900ff"):}::{Lawmakers Reveal Election Deniers’ Plans for Scanning and Throwing Out ‘Invalid’ Ballots

January 24, 2022

The emails obtained by American Oversight, which outlined a plan to overturn Trump’s election loss in Arizona, also included members of Trump’s legal team.

Fake Electoral Certificates Obtained by American Oversight Draw Renewed Scrutiny

January 12, 2022

The phony documents were submitted to Congress by Republicans in several states who sought to overturn Biden’s 2020 election victory by casting the state’s electoral votes for Trump instead.

The Latest Attempt by Wisconsin Legislative Leaders to Undermine Election Has Been in the Works for Months

June 17, 2021

Emails uncovered by American Oversight reveal an early April meeting between legislative leaders and one of the former police officers hired to investigate the 2020 election in Wisconsin.

American Oversight Obtains Seven Phony Certificates of Pro-Trump Electors

March 2, 2021

The phony electoral vote certificates from seven states were submitted to Congress as part of the failed attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Investigations Update: Florida Vaccine Distribution, Anti-Protest Measures, and Trump’s Efforts to Overturn Georgia’s Election Results

February 9, 2021

See the latest in our investigations into the coronavirus pandemic response and into officials’ attempts to interfere with democracy.

Investigations Update: The Efforts by Trump — and Top Officials — to Overturn the Election

February 2, 2021

See the latest in our investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn the presidential election and multiple state lawmakers’ ties to the Capitol attack.

RELATED DOCUMENTS...

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https://www.americanoversight.org/in-the-documents-new-details-about-the-origins-of-the-arizona-senates-discredited-election-audit

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PUBLISH DATE: MARCH 7, 2022

IN THE DOCUMENTS: NEW DETAILS ABOUT THE ORIGINS OF THE ARIZONA SENATE’S DISCREDITED ELECTION ‘AUDIT’

Efforts to undermine the 2020 election results in Arizona led to the state Senate’s sham “audit” of votes cast in Maricopa County, which furthered lies about voter fraud and galvanized Big Lie proponents to undertake similar election-undermining exploits in other states. While officials claimed the review was designed to restore confidence in election integrity and expose purported fraud, documents uncovered through American Oversight’s public records litigation pointed to its origins in baseless conspiracy theories and post-election efforts to subvert the results of a free and fair election.

Below are additional details from American Oversight’s review of more than 80,000 pages of “audit”-related records released by the Arizona Senate in August 2021 in response to our ongoing lawsuit. The records include communications of state Sen. Kelly Townsend about the scheme to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s victory by appointing false, pro-Trump Arizona presidential electors, as well as emails from Senate President Karen Fann regarding her selection of the firm Cyber Ninjas to conduct the “audit.”

TOWNSEND’S RESOLUTION AND EFFORTS TO APPOINT ALTERNATE ELECTORS

The documents contain a December 2020 letter signed by Townsend, who had just been elected to the state Senate, addressed to then-Vice President Mike Pence asking that he “not accept” Arizona’s valid electors during the Jan. 6 congressional certification of the election results. It’s unclear whether Pence received the letter, but Townsend’s letter appears to be similar to one sent by state Rep. Jake Hoffman the day before the certification that, as reported recently by the Arizona Republic, also asked the vice president not to accept the state’s electoral votes.

Townsend’s letter is dated Dec. 31, 2020. That same day, she shared it in an email to Ron Hooper of the nonprofit U.S. Term Limits and investor Bradley Rotter and asked for feedback. Rotter replied, copying conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi as well as someone named Phil Cannon: “Please meet Corsi Undergrounder Phil Cannon who can get your letter to Keith Kellogg who is the Natl Security Advisor to the VP.”

The letter to Pence also referenced the “alternate slate of electors” sent by Arizona on Dec. 14, 2020, the day Arizona and multiple other states submitted forged electoral certificates to Congress, seeking to overturn Biden’s victory by falsely claiming their states’ electoral votes went to Trump.

On Jan. 5, 2021, Townsend introduced a resolution in the Arizona Senate to revoke Biden votes and appoint the alternate electors, among whom were Hoffman and Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward. That same day, Townsend followed up on her email with a link to the resolution, writing, “This resolution to appoint the alternate slate of electors is prepared and ready for the election audit findings, should they result in what I expect to happen.” In December, state Senate leaders had issued subpoenas to Maricopa County demanding the release of ballots cast, voting machines, voter rolls, and other election information.

The records obtained by American Oversight also reveal that the office of U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks — a congressman from Alabama who on Jan. 6 gave an inflammatory speech to Trump supporters outside the White House — was actively seeking information that could be used to challenge election results. On Dec. 22, 2020, a Brooks staffer emailed Arizona Rep. Mark Finchem indicating that the office was “putting together a master memo on the valid grounds” for objecting to the Electoral College certification.

The staffer also asked Finchem for a memo detailing “allegations of fraud and other election irregularities” from a meeting involving Rudy Giuliani that had been held on Nov. 30 in Phoenix. Later that day, a Townsend staffer sent a copy of Townsend’s resolution toBrooks’ office, asking to be notified once it was “submitted to Congress.”

On Jan. 5, Finchem circulated another letter addressed to Pence regarding the “reclamation of Electoral College Electors from Arizona,” signed by Finchem, Townsend, and other Arizona House and Senate members. State Sen. Sonny Borrelli forwarded the letter to Phillip Jauregui, the head of the conservative advocacy organization Judicial Action Group, writing: “Mark has the most updated list” — likely referring to the list of lawmakers signing the letter and resolution. Jauregui, who is based in Birmingham, Alabama, was later invited to the July 2021 election integrity call that included numerous election deniers across the country, including Finchem, Townsend, Brooks, and Brooks aide Madison Engelking.

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FANN’S CORRESPONDENCE WITH CONSTITUENTS ON CHALLENGING THE ELECTION

On Dec. 13, 2020, in response to a constituent who demanded that the state Legislature “decertify” the election results, Arizona Senate President Fann said that she had met with a “nationally accredited constitutional attorney” and that lawmakers needed evidence of “clear fraud.”

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“With respect to the US Constitution Article 2 and 3 provisions,” Fann wrote, “we spent an hour and a half with a nationally accredited constitutional attorney which was extremely interesting and I learned a lot. He stated that the ‘plenary clause’ allowing us to convene ourselves with a simple majority applies ‘when there is no clear winner of an election.’”

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The records do not indicate the name of the attorney who spoke with Fann, but the idea that state legislatures, rather than the popular vote, could determine the winner of the election was frequently espoused by Trump allies. In a now-famous memo prepared around that time, Trump-allied lawyer John Eastman outlined a plan for Pence to reject the results from states with “dual slates of electors,” writing that Article II granted state legislatures “the plenary power to determine the manner for choosing presidential electors.”

In her email, Fann added that there had “been no proof provided to the courts” of significant voter fraud, but that the Senate was “committed to pursuing these claims” through an “audit” of Maricopa County, and referred to Jan. 6 as a deadline for altering the election’s results. “We are hoping any substantiated information from any state regarding voter fraud can be brought and verified by January 6th, 2021 when congress convenes to give the final ‘blessing’ on the election. That would be one of our last options to make a difference in the outcome of the 2020 election.”

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FANN ON SELECTING CYBER NINJAS

In response to a July 2021 press inquiry from a far-right media outlet, Fann provided details about the process of hiring the firm Cyber Ninjas to conduct the election “audit,” which had begun in April.

Fann told the reporter that early in the process, she had asked the Federal Election Commission for a list of “certified forensic election auditors,” a designation that does not appear to exist.Cyber Ninjas had no election experience prior to the “audit,” and is not one of the two firms accredited by the Election Assistance Commission to certify voting machines; earlier in 2021, those two firms had been hired by Maricopa County to perform an audit of voting equipment and confirmed that the votes had been counted accurately.

Fann described reaching out to “people in other states who were already talking about audits” and asking contacts for recommendations. “It was part of this process that [Cyber Ninjas CEO] Doug Logan’s name came up along with many other referrals,” Fann wrote. “I was told Mr Logan was the gentleman working with the issues in Atrium [sic] County and Fulton County.”

Fann was likely referring to Michigan’s Antrim County,the home of a debunked report on fraud. But it is unclear from the email whether she is referring to Pennsylvania’s Fulton County — where the firm Wake TSI, which later joined Cyber Ninjas’ audit team in Arizona, conducted partisan audits of election equipment — or to Georgia’s Fulton County, home to Atlanta and a target of voter-fraud conspiracy theories. But the mention of efforts in other states to dig up evidence of purported fraud is yet another illustration of how activists and conservative allies across the country were often working together, with the same contractors and election conspiracy theorists. American Oversight is investigating similar efforts to undermine faith in our democracy in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Texas.

FANN EMAILS REGARDING TRUMP LEGAL TEAM

In other emails to constituents who complained that the election had been compromised, Fann often referred to the Trump legal team’s efforts and the hunt for evidence of significant fraud.

In an email sent Nov. 29, 2020, Fann wrote, “We have to show some credible evidence for ‘fraud’ before the courts or anyone else can do anything. I have asked the Trump legal team MANY times to please bring us their proof of fraud so we may act on it. To date they have not provided any proof.”

On Nov. 30, she wrote, “We have asked the Trump team to please supply the information to us and to please file a lawsuit so we can address this properly according to state laws. To date this information or lawsuit has not been provided in writing.”

To date, American Oversight has uncovered more than 100,000 pages of records from Arizona’s election “audit.” Previous findings — including Fann’s claim that she had received a personal call from Trump thanking her for her efforts — are available here. Our investigation is ongoing, and we are continuing to pursue the release of records held by both the Senate and Cyber Ninjas. Read more about that litigation here.

Part of Investigation:

Attacks on Voting Rights in Arizona

The Arizona Senate’s Partisan Audit of Maricopa County Election Results

The ‘Alternate Electors’ Plot to Overturn the 2020 Election

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press release was sent to the media by Senate Republican spokeswoman Kim Quintero and was subsequently posted on the Senate GOP caucus’ official Twitter page, the Arizona Mirror reported Friday.

Hours later, in the face of intense criticism that the statement broke state law, the Senate retracted the statement and insisted it was “accidentally” distributed through the Senate instead of Fann’s campaign. How that happened is unclear, and neither Fann nor Senate Republican spokeswoman Kim Quintero responded to questions from the Arizona Mirror.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/25/fann-townsend-subpoenas-arizona-trump/

no lnx Democracy Dies in Darkness

Arizona fake-electors subpoenas show breadth of DOJ Jan. 6 probe

Requests for information from two state lawmakers were released under a state public records law

By Devlin Barrett and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez

July 25, 2022

Arizona state Sen. Kelly Townsend, pictured in 2019, and state Senate President Karen Fann received subpoenas seeking communications “relating to any effort, plan, or attempt to serve as an Elector” for Donald Trump after the 2020 election. (Bob Christie/AP)[

Grand jury subpoenas issued last month to two Arizona state lawmakers show the breadth of the criminal investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington into efforts by supporters of Donald Trump to use “false electors” to try to undo Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

Copies of two subpoenas issued to Republican state senators from Arizona were released Monday via a public-records request, confirming what has been previously reported about the June demands for records related “to the signing or mailing of any document purporting to be a Certificate certifying Elector votes in favor of Donald J. Trump and/or Michael R. Pence.”

The subpoenas issued to Karen Fann, president of the Arizona Senate, and Sen. Kelly Townsend also seek communications “relating to any effort, plan, or attempt to serve as an Elector” in favor of the then-president and then-vice president.

A subpoena is not an accusation but rather a demand for information that investigators believe may help them solve a crime. The documents released Monday cast a wide net for any communications that Fann and Townsend may have had with any member of the executive or legislative branch of the federal government; any representative or agent of Trump or his campaign; or Trump boosters Jenna Ellis, Bernard Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, Boris Epshteyn, James Troupis, Joe DiGenova, John Eastman, Joshua Findlay, Justin Clark, Kenneth Chesebro, Mike Roman or Victoria Toensing.

[Trump didn't want to call for Jan. 6 prosecutions, newly released video shows

The subpoenas are just one part of a significant escalation and expansion of the Justice Department’s criminal probe of the events of and leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters seeking to overturn the election results. Around the same time in mid-June, federal agents fanned out in multiple states to serve subpoenas, execute search warrants and interview potential witnesses as part of the investigation into the electors scheme.

Separately, a grand jury in Washington examining Jan. 6 heard testimony Friday from Marc Short, the former chief of staff to Pence, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation. Short’s grand jury appearance was first reported by ABC News. He testified on the same day that a jury in the federal courthouse convicted longtime Trump confidant Stephen K. Bannon of contempt of Congress for refusing to provide information to the U.S. House committee investigating Jan. 6.

In the weeks after the 2020 election, Fann huddled with Arizona state lawmakers and Maricopa County officials to try to broker a deal to conduct a joint audit by an accredited firm of the county’s election results.

On Dec. 1, 2020, she attended a meeting with Giuliani and Ellis, both of whom worked as attorneys for Trump, as well as Kerik, state Republican lawmakers and retired Col. Phil Waldron. Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R) also attended the meeting and later said Giuliani made various claims about election fraud that the former New York mayor could not back up.

“My recollection, he said, ‘We’ve got lots of theories, we just don’t have the evidence,’ ” Bowers told the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.

In the end, the GOP Senate that Fann presided over launched its own review of 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County for the presidential and U.S. Senate race, using a Florida-based firm with no experience in auditing elections. The review affirmed Biden’s win.

More than 840 suspects have been charged in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot

In late 2020, Townsend, as a state representative, sought to prevent the certification of Arizona’s electoral votes. On Dec. 31, she wrote a letter to Pence asking the vice president “to refrain from accepting the Biden electors” until state lawmakers could adequately investigate claims of voter fraud. It is unclear if Pence received the letter.

“We believe it is impossible to conclusively declare a winner in Arizona and pray that you would refrain from counting the electoral votes from our state, and consider the alternate slate should we be able to establish validity to the various claims of election fraud on such a scale that would change the outcome,” said the letter, obtained by the watchdog group American Oversight.

The subpoenas to Fann and Townsend seek all communications or documents exchanged with those who served as Arizona’s alternate electors, as well as communications with state Rep. Mark Finchem, a vocal “Stop the Steal” proponent now vying for the Republican nomination for secretary of state.

Finchem helped organize a Nov. 30, 2020, meeting in downtown Phoenix attended by Giuliani, Ellis, GOP congressmen, state lawmakers and others, where speakers claimed widespread fraud in the election. Finchem was in Washington on Jan. 6. The House committee probing the events of that day issued a subpoena to him in February seeking information about his activities after the election, including comments he made about delivering “an evidence book and letter to Vice President Pence showing key evidence of fraud” in the election “and asking him to consider postponing the award of electors.”

The subpoenas to Fann and Townsend also seek any communications they had with a host of Arizona GOP figures who either helped assemble a list of Trump-backing electors or were on a list of such electors.

[In Georgia Trump probe, DA is blocked from investigating GOP lawmaker

Townsend has previously said that as chair of the elections committee, she tried to conduct an investigation because legislators “have plenary authority and responsibility to send the correct slate, and because it was in question, we wanted to have an alternate slate in case fraud was discovered and found.”

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On Monday, she said she had one or two phone calls with Giuliani in December 2020 but no longer has the phone on which those calls were made. She said she has described the nature of the calls to the FBI.

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“They asked me not to talk about it because of the investigation,” Townsend told The Washington Post in an interview. She said it was her impression that FBI agents were seeking information about one of Trump’s attorneys.

The subpoenas also seek a list of all email accounts, social media accounts and telephone numbers used by Fann and Townsend between October 2020 and now.

The subpoenas are signed by Thomas Windom, a federal prosecutor who has been tasked with investigating the false-electors scheme.

A spokesperson for Fann, who is not seeking reelection when her term expires in January, has said she is cooperating with the investigation. The spokesperson said they do not expect Fann to have to testify in person to the grand jury, which is located in Washington.

Some within Trump’s orbit, particularly Eastman, a law professor, had advocated offering new slates of “Trump electors” to challenge the electors in key states, such as Arizona, that Trump won in 2016 but lost in 2020. The scheme failed in part because even GOP-controlled state legislatures did not endorse the effort.

Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report.

The Jan. 6 insurrection

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection has held a series of high-profile hearings throughout the summer: Find Day 8′s highlights and analysis.

Congressional hearings: The House committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol has conducted a series of hearings to share its findings with the U.S. public. The eighth hearing focused on Trump’s inaction on Jan. 6. Here’s a guide to the biggest moments so far.

Will there be charges? The committee could make criminal referrals of former president Donald Trump over his role in the attack, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said in an interview.

What we know about what Trump did on Jan. 6: New details emerged when Hutchinson testified before the committee and shared what she saw and heard on Jan. 6.

The riot: On Jan. 6, 2021, a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of the 2020 election results. Five people died on that day or in the immediate aftermath, and 140 police officers were assaulted.

Inside the siege: During the rampage, rioters came perilously close to penetrating the inner sanctums of the building while lawmakers were still there, including former vice president Mike Pence. The Washington Post examined text messages, photos and videos to create a video timeline of what happened on Jan. 6.

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https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2022/06/30/karen-fann-kelly-townsend-subpoenaed-fbi-arizona-lawmakers/7785249001/

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fBI subpoenas records of Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, state Sen. Kelly Townsend

Ray Stern

Mary Jo Pitzl

Arizona Republic

Arizona state Sen. Kelly Townsend (top) and Arizona Senate President Karen Fann.

The FBI has issued subpoenas to Arizona Senate President Karen Fann and state Sen. Kelly Townsend, compelling them to release records believed related to former President Donald Trump's effort to stay in power after losing the 2020 election.

Fann, the longtime Republican lawmaker from Prescott who ordered the partisan review of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, told The Arizona Republic the FBI issued a Freedom of Information Act request "in the form of a subpoena for my emails and communications. I'm instructed not to discuss."

She wouldn't confirm another report stating that the probe sought records about contacts from Trump and his team following the November 2020 election. But she added, "pretty sure everything they've asked for has already been foiaed numerous times over the past 18 months," using an acronym for the information act.

Democracy in doubt:The origins of the Arizona election review

The Yellow Sheet, a political newsletter, first reported the subpoenas.

In mid-November 2020, Fann told House Speaker Rusty Bowers that Trump's advocates had called her repeatedly, encouraging her to help him find a way to get ahead of Joe Biden in Arizona, where Trump lost by about 10,500 votes.

Public records also show that on Dec. 28, Fann told a constituent she was in “numerous conversations with Rudy Giuliani over the past weeks trying to get this done. I have the full support of him and a personal call from President Trump thanking us for pushing to prove any fraud."

Townsend, who lives in Apache Junction and has served in the Legislature since 2013, told The Republic that she had received a subpoena but did not comment further. She told 12 News that the FBI sought communications records with Trump's lawyers and that she and her staff were complying.

Last week, Kelli Ward, chairwoman of the state Republican Party and her husband Michael, were subpoenaed by the Department of Justice regarding their roles in creating and attempting to submit a slate of fake electors for the November 2020 election.

The Washington Post last week reported that two of the other 11 fake electors — Loraine Pellegrino and Nancy Cottle — also received subpoenas from a federal grand jury. The two women were subpoenaed earlier this year by the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

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The congressional panel also subpoenaed the Wards for their phone records, which the couple is fighting in federal court. The case is pending.}:

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https://newrepublic.com/article/166778/cleta-mitchell-trump-lawyer-2022-midterm-elections

no lnx many

Peter Stone/June 29, 2022

Ballot Boxer

This Former Trump Lawyer Wants You to Disrupt the 2022 Midterms

Cleta Mitchell desperately tried to undo Trump's loss in Georgia in 2020. Now she's using the Big Lie to recruit conservatives as poll workers for the November elections.

A spacious ballroom at the Arizona Grand Resort in Phoenix was packed the weekend of March 11 with scores of Donald Trump loyalists still fuming about widely debunked claims that Joe Biden won the 2020 election thanks to rampant fraud. Dubbed an “election integrity summit,” the gathering was the handiwork of Trump’s former legal adviser, the veteran conservative activist Cleta Mitchell. And while Mitchell has garnered national attention for riling up Trumpists with false claims of election fraud in Georgia after the state was called for Biden, she’s now quietly channeling that anger into mobilizing activists to aggressively combat the specter of voting fraud in the next battle: the 2022 midterm elections.

Mitchell organized the Arizona summit on behalf of the Conservative Partnership Institute, a nonprofit that raked in $1 million from Trump’s leadership PAC last year. Founded in 2017 by former South Carolina SenatorJim DeMint, CPI has become a hub for the Big Lie in exile, with former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows signing up as senior partner shortly after leaving the White House last year, and Mitchell joining in March 2021 as senior legal fellow. CPI boasted revenue of $5.3 million in fiscal 2019, has arranged D.C. internships for young conservatives, and has worked with other right-wing groups to push conservative goals.

But central to the institute’s current mission is Mitchell, who leads its self-styled “election integrity network.” She has engineered a roaming series of summits this year in states Republicans hope to swing back in 2024: Georgia, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Michigan, and Nevada—along with the perennial battleground Florida, which Trump won. Mitchell has sold the network as a way to create state and local election “infrastructure,” which includes advocating unorthodox surveillance tactics of election officials and operations to ferret out any hints of fraud—real, or more often hypothetical.

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One notable speaker at the summit, whom Mitchell interviewed on a stage, was Karen Fann, the Arizona state Senate president and 2022 national chairwoman of the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council,a group that promotes model laws for states to adopt, and that Mitchell has previously advised.Arizona has already passed one anti-voting law this year, imposing onerous restrictions to prove citizenship before registering to vote, and the state legislature is currently considering a raft of other measures that would empower state officials to conduct further reviews of elections.}:

One attendee of the Phoenix summit, who asked for anonymity, told me that “the event definitely used the false allegations of fraud in 2020 as a call to action to rally support for vigilant engagement this year in the election process,” to spur more robust monitoring of polling sites. The attendee added: “There was a large focus on recruiting precinct officials to watch the polls and all of the other processes associated with elections.”

To voting rights advocates, the campaign looks like a recipe for voter suppression and intimidation, especially of minorities, and could incite harassment against election officials. At these summits, the 71-year-old Mitchell, members of conservative groups such as Tea Party Patriots, GOP elected officials, and Republican National Committee staffers have delivered a blunt message: Conservatives ought to expand poll watching and “clean up” voter rolls—often by working as precinct and poll officials—in order to curb any voting fraud and bolster their electoral chances in 2022.

Mitchell hails from Oklahoma, where she began her career as a Democratic member of the state legislature before moving to D.C. and switching parties in the 1990s. Since then, she has amassed an extensive résumé of conservative clients: Mitchell has done legal stints advising the National Rifle Association (where she was once a board member), numerous GOP campaigns, and several dark-money nonprofit groups.

Some veteran conservatives who know Mitchell’s work say that her advice often pushed the legal envelope. “You tell Cleta where you want to end up, and she will come up with a way to get you there, whether it’s legal or not,” one former senior NRA official told me, quipping that she’s the “fringe of the fringe.” And a GOP election lawyer who has known Mitchell for years, and requested anonymity, added: “Cleta was sort of a classic lawyer for Donald Trump because she told Trump what he wanted to hear, as opposed to what he ought to hear from his lawyer.”

Mitchell started as a volunteer legal adviser to bolster Trump’s fraud claims in Georgia. She was recruited by Meadows the day after the 2020 election and eventually emerged as part of the core group of Trump lackeys attempting to subvert the results. She participated in Trump’s phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, wherein the president attempted to coerce the state official to “find” the extra 11,780 votes he needed to win the state. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is currently conducting a wide-ranging probe into that call, examining whether Trump and the other participants broke state laws. A special grand jury was impaneled in early May.

Mitchell has also been subpoenaed by the House panel probing the January 6 insurrection, as she was in contact with Trump that day. In response, Mitchell filed a lawsuit to block the subpoena. When reports of her role on Trump’s call with Raffensperger quickly surfaced in 2021, Mitchell resigned from her two-decade career with the law firm Foley & Lardner—as it was conducting an internal review—and joined CPItwo months later. (Mitchell did not respond to a request for comment for this story.)

“Cleta Mitchell allied herself with Trump’s election conspiracy theories on the infamous Trump-Raffensperger call,” Dennis Aftergut, a former federal prosecutor, said, adding acidly: “If that makes one an advocate for election integrity, Charles Ponzi was a champion of investment integrity.”

:{:{}:

In loose alliance with other conservative groups such as Heritage Action, Tea Party Patriots, and FreedomWorks—where she was tapped in March 2021 to lead a “National Election Protection Initiative” with a multimillion-dollar budget—Mitchell and CPI have worked with gusto to tighten voting laws: That campaign helped spur at least 19 states in 2021 to pass more stringent voting measures, including voter identification mandates and curbs on absentee ballots, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.}:

Mitchell’s cachet among the right’s big donors is considerable: She sits on the board of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which has doled out hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent years to conservative election integrity and legal groups, including the Public Interest Legal Foundation, where Mitchell chairs the board. To help Trump overturn his loss in Arizona, Mitchell raised about $1 million in funds for a partisan audit of the state’s largest county—which wound up backfiring when the audit confirmed Trump’s loss there.

The programming at the CPI summits this year has partly overlapped, and included participants from an RNC election integrity drive that has recruited directors in 18 states and thousands of poll watchers, as The New York Times revealed in late May. To tutor activists at the summits about how to create local and state task forces, Mitchell and CPI have distributed a 19-page manual dubbed “The Citizens Guide to Building an Election Integrity Infrastructure.” The manual suggests some traditional poll monitor methods, but takes an ominous tone, urging activists to follow “every step” of vote-by-mail operations and advising them to “be ever-present” inside election offices.

:{:{}:

AMAC Action, a conservative grassroots arm of the Association of Mature American Citizens that boasts over two million members, has co-sponsored several CPI summits. “We don’t want to see the kinds of shenanigans in 2020” again, Bob Carlstrom, AMAC Action’s president, told me. Carlstrom, a veteran D.C. lobbyist who expected to attend his first summit in North Carolina in June, added thatAMAC Action has encouraged its volunteers to be poll workers, election officials, and poll watchers. His group also has “been quite active in working on legislation” in Arizona, Texas, Pennsylvania, and other states where CPI and allied groups have spent millions promoting new laws that have curbed voting rights.}:

Such multifaceted conservative efforts by Mitchell and CPI have prompted concern from election watchdogs worried about the false narrative of major fraud leading to voter suppression and intimidation targeting Black and other minority voters. “These lies are then used to justify restrictive policies that make it harder for people to vote, particularly in communities of color,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, the acting director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center for Justice. He added, “It is also important to remind voters that there are laws prohibiting the intimidation of voters and election officials. We cannot let the threat of intimidation alone prevent anyone from participating in our democracy.”

According to Mitchell’s blog and radio interviews she’s done this year—including an April one with Trump uber loyalist Steve Bannon—the CPI summits are building a state-based “movement.” Mitchell now hosts a podcast, dubbed Who’s Counting, where she speaks with like-minded conservative activists in states such as Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. The podcasts tend to hype allegations of improper voting and election practices. Mitchell bluntly told Jane Mayer of The New Yorker last year that the goal of her post-2020 work has been “to make it harder to cheat,” without a nod to former Attorney General William Barr’s acknowledgment in late 2020 that there was no significant fraud in Biden’s win by over seven million votes nationally.

Since the first meeting in 2021, the summits have drawn several conservative and political bigwigs, including Tea Party Patriots leader Jenny Beth Martin and CPI chair DeMint. Meadows was a keynote speaker at a CPI summit in Georgia, but his public role has diminished following the disclosure in March that North Carolina was investigating whether he committed voter fraud. The inquiry was prompted by a New Yorker report that in 2020 Meadows registered to vote using an address where he’d never lived—a potential rare instance of actual voter fraud. Shortly before the probe became public, Meadows quietly dropped out of CPI’s Phoenix summit, where he was supposed to be a keynote speaker, and he does not appear to have been at any other public CPI events.

The “election integrity” agenda advanced by CPI and Mitchell has set off alarm bells for Democratic SenatorSheldon Whitehouse. “From Cleta Mitchell’s dark-money group to Heritage Action, we see dark money crawling everywhere behind voter suppression and election subversion,” Whitehouse told me.

Looking ahead, the Brennan Center’s Morales-Doyle is worried that the summits could “increase the risk that vigilante actors will engage in intimidation and harassment of voters and election workers. In short, the people promoting these lies about so-called election integrity are doing serious harm to our democracy.”

Peter Stone is a Washington-based investigative journalist who has covered a wide array of lobbying, legal, and campaign finance issues, working for National Journal, McClatchy newspapers, and Legal Times, among other publications. As a freelancer, his work has also appeared in The Guardian, The New York Review of Books Daily, Mother Jones, The Intercept, and many other news outlets. He is the author of Heist: Superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, His Republican Allies and the Buying of Washington.

Read More: Magazine, July-August 2022, State Of The Nation, Politics, The Soapbox, Midterm Elections, Republican Party, Donald Trump, Arizona, Georgia

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REUTERS

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In Arizona, Republicans in the state Senate pushed for a “forensic audit” of the vote in the state’s largest county.

Arizona’s Senate president, Karen Fann, turned to Florida cybersecurity contractor Doug Logan to do the job. Logan’s firm, Cyber Ninjas, had no experience running audits or elections, though Logan said he had done previous work reviewing 2020 election disputes. Logan told Reuters he wasn’t sure how his company was picked for the task; he said he didn’t submit a proposal until Fann contacted him.

Logan did have connections, though. He confirmed to Reuters he was among those who huddled with Flynn at Wood’s estate after the election. And he received an endorsement from Waldron, who called him “very reputable” in a text message to Sen. Fann before she selected him to run the audit, records released in a public records lawsuit show.

“If you’re talking to an audience that cares what General Flynn thinks, and you tell the audience, ‘I did this in this military,’ then they’re more likely to be impressed.”

Pauline Shanks Kaurin, a professor of military ethics at the U.S. Naval War College]

“We did things the right way,” Logan said. Through a spokesman, Fann declined to comment.

:{:{}:

The Arizona Senate audit cost $5.7 million. It was largely financed by Flynn’s team.

Nearly $1 million came from a nonprofit called America’s Future, which until then had been largely dormant, Internal Revenue Service filings show. Flynn now chairs its board. His brother Joe Flynn was a director. And his sister, Mary O’Neill, was executive director.

Joe Flynn declined to comment. O’Neill did not respond to a request for comment.

Michael and Joe Flynn also briefly served as directors of Powell’s nonprofit Defending The Republic, which kicked in $550,000 for the Arizona audit.

Another $3.5 million came from The America Project, whose website features a video from Flynn declaring, “Our great nation was under a new type of attack.” Joe Flynn is one of the nonprofit’s three board members, and Flynn its senior strategic advisor.

The America Project’s chief executive, former Overstock CEO Byrne, told Reuters Flynn “asked me to come down and set this up.” Flynn “is a driving force” to continue fighting the results of the 2020 election, said the group’s operations officer, Carl Johnson. The America Project told Florida regulators it expected to raise $50 million this year, records show. Byrne said the group raised closer to $10 million, mostly from him.

The resulting Arizona audit featured reviewers with little training who scrutinized ballots using procedures that were widely criticized by election experts; Logan defended the auditing work. The review confirmed Biden won.

This November 19, retired captain Keshel and current reserve lieutenant colonel Raiklin were featured speakers at an “election integrity” rally in Manchester, New Hampshire. Citing polls saying a growing number of rightwing Americans believe the election was rigged, Raiklin and Keshel told a crowd of about 75 that their movement is succeeding.

Noting his legal and military intelligence background, Raiklin laid out what he called a “deep state” conspiracy theory of a stolen election. “I connected these dots,” Raiklin told the crowd.

Keshel, now a paid consultant for The America Project, said Trump supporters faced a “two-front war” – auditing the 2020 election and preparing for 2024.

“It sounds a little crazy,” Keshel said. “But I do believe wholeheartedly … that the future will reflect the truth of the 2020 election, that Joe Biden was illegitimately elected.”

Both men received standing ovations.

END

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trms 9/14 gableman gmail ltr kloster?

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an 921

the team of Arizona Republican state senators, legislative staff, and advisers finalizing the Cyber Ninjas' report on the 2020 presidential election in Maricopa County are preparing to say that Joe Biden legitimately won the election, according to thelargest funder of the Senate's mostly privatized election review, former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne.

"The way some of these political RINOs [Republicans In Name Only] are doing this is they're trying to argue that the [election] report should only be allowed to go and address the original construct of the report, the original assignment of the audit, and leave out other things that have been found," Byrne told Creative Destruction Media's L. Todd Wood.

"The political class is going to try to come in and water this down," Byrne said. "The Republican political class, the RINOs, the nobodies… They are going to try to water this down. I am sure they all have been promised federal judgeships or sacks of cash under a streetlight if they can get this killed at this late date or watered down. And I think the public of Arizona should go ballistic."

Byrne's comments were made on August 29 but have been reposted on pro-Trump media in recent days as Arizona's Republican Senate leadership is finalizing its report on the election. Trump has also revived his attacks on "RINOs" in recent days on Telegram, a social media site favored by his base.

The Arizona Senate's review team includes Doug Logan, the CEO of the Cyber Ninjas, its lead contractor—which is writing the report and has been paid $3.2 million from Byrne's organizations.

Byrne's comments underscore what observers of the Arizona Senate's review have anticipated for months—that any credible review would conclude there were no major problems with Maricopa County's conduct of the presidential elections, although, as in any election, some procedures could be improved to make the vote-counting process more transparent.

Cyber Ninjas was hired to oversee a manual recount of Maricopa County's presidential and U.S. Senate votes and to examine whether the county's ballots were authentic or possibly forged. Logan and his team had little or no prior election audit experience, and their methods were criticized as secretive and deeply flawed. Nonetheless, for months the Arizona "audit" has been a driving force perpetuating the "big lie," or the false claim that the election was rigged by Democrats and establishment actors who orchestrated a massive vote-stealing operation.

The Arizona review has generated endless conspiracy theories and became a rallying cry, if not a litmus test, for Trump-centered Republicans. It has inspired loyalists in other presidential swing states to launch similar reviews long after the 2020 election results were certified.

The stolen election claims, however, have not produced any evidence that has been accepted by any state or federal court. Instead, Trump's campaign legal team has been sanctioned by a U.S. District Court judge in Michigan for lying in court, and some of his lawyers face fines and disbarment. In Arizona, a team of retired election auditors with decades of experience has published analyses using official 2020 election records to document how nearly 60,000 ballots had a majority of votes for Republican candidates but not for Trump. Trump lost the state by nearly 11,000 votes.

Sources in Arizona have said that the state Senate review team was spooked by the possible losses of law licenses looming over Trump's attorneys, as well as stern warnings from the U.S. Department of Justice for possibly using investigative methods that could violate voter intimidation laws. As a result, they have been editing the report drafted by the Senate's lead contractor, Cyber Ninjas, and excising claims and narratives that are speculative rather than factual. This has delayed the report's release until the week of September 20, sources indicated.

The review team consists of Arizona Senate President Karen Fann;Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Warren Petersen; Senate legal counsel Greg Jernigan; contract Senate attorneys Kory Langhofer and Thomas Basile of Statecraft; Garth Kamp, the Senate's senior policy adviser; audit liaison and former Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett; audit spokesman Randy Pullen; and Logan, the Cyber Ninjas CEO, according to the Arizona Republic.

Byrne's apparent frustration with the Senate stems from the decision not to include claims made in early September by Arizona Trump activist Liz Harris that there were 173,104 "lost votes" and 96,389 "ghost votes" in the Maricopa County election. That claim was quickly debunked by the county's Republican election director—and was the subject of the Justice Department's May 5 warning letter. During his interview with Creative Destruction Media, Byrne also cited sloppily marked ballots that were adjudicated—or set aside for review of the voter's intent—as another instance of when votes were allegedly changed.

Byrne's suggestion that the Arizona Senate is rejecting the conspiratorial narratives put forth by Logan—as well as Logan's subcontractors and partisan allies like Harris—could set the stage for one of the most stunning reversals in contemporary politics. Trump's endless claims of a stolen election led to an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. A rally defending those subsequently arrested and prosecuted is planned in Washington for September 18.

Meanwhile, across the country, pro-Trump Republicans have called for copycat audits in their states, and many candidates seeking office in 2022—including most of the Republicans running for governor in Arizona—have said they believe a second term was stolen from Trump.Those responses have been fueled to a large degree by Byrne's organizations and media projects, which include a book, a conspiracy-laden documentary film, and extensive fundraising efforts.

In short, Byrne is signaling, presumably based on what Logan and other allies have told him, that the Arizona Senate's review of the 2020 election will conclude that Biden beat Trump.

"The people of Arizona should make it very clear that they will not accept any political interference in this report," Byrne complained. "It's the kiss of death. If politicians get involved… The whole point was that we don't trust the politicians. We wanted some technologists to look at stuff and tell us what they find. To have them spend all these millions of dollars and all these months and this effort to do that… and then to have some weenie politicians get involved."

"I hope that it's made really clear in social media that the citizens of Arizona and this country do not want any political interference in this report from the political class in Arizona," he said. "[Within t]he Republican political class, believe it or not, there are some weak sisters. There are some RINOs… It's all corrupt."

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===

Republicans in Arizona were blocked by the state's supreme court from concealing documents about the controversial audit.

"The AZ Supreme Court won't hear [Arizona Senate President Karen Fann's] appeal of the Court of Appeals' ruling that audit documents possessed by Senate subcontractors are public records. The Senate will have to turn over communications, invoices and other audit-related records," Jeremy Duda of the Arizona Mirror reported Tuesday.

Duda noted the records would include who is getting paid, "contracts or agreements the audit team has with outside funders" and communication among subcontractors.

Jim Small, the editor in chief of the Arizona Mirror, offered his analysis on Twitter.

"To drive home what this means: The AZ Supreme Court is rejecting the claim by [Arizona Senate Republicans] and [state Senate President Karen Fann] that they are above the law," he wrote.

"Arizona law does not allow public servants to outsource democracy and shroud their conduct in secrecy," said Austin Evers, the group's executive director. "The Arizona Senate's legal maneuvering to conceal these records from the public matches the outrageousness of their so-called audit. That ends today. Arizonans can look forward to much-needed transparency, even if it may reveal gross attacks on democracy itself."

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https://crooksandliars.com/2021/09/newly-released-documents-show-az-fraudit

it is not like we didn’t already know that the so-called audit is a fraudit. But the American Oversight group has recently obtained thousands of pages of records related to the “audit” as the result of a public records lawsuit.

American Oversight is still reviewing the records. VICE News notes that the trove includes communications that suggest Donald Trump wanted to fund it and that his allies were involved from the start.

one prominent Trump ally who turns up in the documents is Trump’s former chief of staff and former RNC chair Reince Priebus. American Oversight found that audit spokesman Randy Pullen texted Priebus in December, before Pullen was officially involved in the audit.

That month, Pullen texted Priebus to tell him about the potential for a “Forensic audit,” and in March asked Priebus for “suggestions on election audit firms.” (Priebus said he would check.) Another text from Pullen to [AZ Republican Committee’s Bruce] Ash, sent on March 8, appears to reference Priebus: “I texted Reince and ask if he would like to help out on the audit,” Pullen said, then followed up to say they were speaking later that morning.

Trump lawyers also show up in the documents. They communicated with with OAN “reporter” Christina Bobb, who helped launch the fraudit, helped fund it and was given special access to its proceedings. More from American Oversight:

In December, according to records previously obtained by American Oversight, One America News reporter Christina Bobb — who later began raising money for the “audit” — provided Fann [Arizona's Senate president] with purported “evidence” of voter fraud, writing that Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani had “asked me to send you these declarations.” The newly released records include a group text from March 31 involving Fann and Bobb, with Giuliani also included, in which Fann passes along a document with a title that began “Pres. Fann audit hiring.”

Then there is Shiva Ayyadurai, aka “Dr. Shiva,” an anti-vaxxer, pro-Trumper who dubiously claims he invented email and has falsely accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of being hellbent on forced and mandatory vaccines. American Oversight reported that its newly-obtained documents include a signed contract between Cyber Ninjas, the unqualified firm conducting the audit, and Ayyadurai.

Priebus plans to bring Dr. Shiva to Wisconsin for its "investigation":

Last month, Priebus reportedly said during an interview that the Wisconsin investigation would be bringing in “Dr. Shiva.” https://t.co/232ivCy3ol

— American Oversight (@weareoversight) September 1, 2021

Some of the frauditors made some darned good money, too!

Some of the positions paid up to $125/hour. pic.twitter.com/RPY7XYpymB

— TRAPEZOID OF DISCOVERY (@get_innocuous) September 1, 2021

There’s still plenty left to be discovered. VICE notes that 2,500 of the Arizona Senate’s most sensitive documents, including almost all direct communications with Cyber Ninjas and CEO Doug Logan, have been withheld as privileged. Meanwhile, you can dive into the documents already released here.

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david a jn 2021

the public face of the preposterous Maricopa County ballot audit is Republican Arizona State Senate President Karen Fann — who also serves as the second-highest ranking board member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the country’s pre-eminent pay-to-play corporate lobbying group.

The audit, which has now earned the nickname “The Mess in Maricopa,” is the most conspicuous ongoing attempt by Republicans to bolster the “Big Lie” conspiracy theory that Donald Trump didn’t really lose the presidential election in November.

In her role as ALEC board treasurer, Fann oversees the group’s agenda and is likely next in line to become its national chair, as ALEC does not currently have a vice chair. Unlike other ideologically conservative lobbying groups, ALEC’s business model is specifically to pursue corporate agendas at the state level

so while American corporations are trying to distance themselves from extremist Republican challenges to democracy at the state level, Fann’s prominent and unapologetic role in the Arizona farce adds to the already ample evidence that at least some American corporations are aggressively supporting state-level actions that, as over 100 democracy scholars explained on Tuesday, “are transforming several states into political systems that no longer meet the minimum conditions for free and fair elections.”

In 2012, ALEC was forced to publicly disband its “Public Safety and Elections” task force after scores of major corporations started dropping their membership due to its pursuit of “Stand Your Ground” and Voter ID model legislation.

:{:{But in the summer of 2019, ALEC secretly launched a “Process Working Group” that is tasked with elections and redistricting. Fann is part of that group, which is chaired by fellow Arizona State Rep. Shawnna Bolick (R) as well as disgraced attorney and Trump advisor Cleta Mitchel:(style="background-color:#ff9900ff"):}:l.}:

As Senate president, Fann approved the initial state payment of $150,000 for the audit. The audit is now also receiving funds through a dark money vehicle run by staffers with the ultra-right-wing broadcasting company One America News (OAN), which traffics in election conspiracies.

“We are paying for some of the security and the cost of the Coliseum [where the audit is held],” Fann told CNN last week, adding that “anything over and above is being covered by others” and that she does “not know who they are.”

The private funding of the audit comes shortly after Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) signed a bill in April banning the private funding of elections going forward, and “pledged to partner with the Legislature to provide elections officials with adequate resources.”

Fann Questioned Vote Count Within a Week After the Election

Six days after the election, on November 9, 2020, Fann wrote a letter to Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) urging her to “make available all data and the logic and accuracy tests to independent expert evaluation.”

Fann argued that claims of voter fraud in the state “will linger indefinitely and may cause substantial damage to the credibility of our democratic processes if something isn’t done to alleviate claims that the election was conducted unfairly, if not fraudulently.”

But no evidence of voter fraud emerged in Arizona.

A number of legal challenges to the election results were filed in the state, but all were dismissed. One was filed by Arizona GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward, a former ALEC-tied lawmaker, who has faced allegations within her own party that her election to the party’s top post in the state was fraudulent.

Ward tweeted on the day of the Capitol insurrection: “Congress is adjourned. Send the elector choice back to the legislatures.”

Ward told Newsmax she hoped the Maricopa audit would set a national precedent: “Arizona is the first domino that will fall and then other states will look into irregularities, abnormalities, mistakes and potentially outright fraud that happened in their states as well.”

To conduct the audit, Fann in March chose a fellow Stop the Steal advocate, Doug Logan, owner of an untested Florida-based company called Cyber Ninjas.This is Cyber Ninjas’ first election audit.

The Arizona Mirror reported that in December, Logan had reposted a tweet from “Ron Watkins — a conspiracy theorist and former administrator of 8chan who has promoted QAnon and is believed by some to have run the Q account — that claimed an audit of the election might show that ‘Trump got 200k more votes than previously reported in Arizona.'”

The Center for Media and Democracy filed a public records request with Arizona state senators for records related to the Cyber Ninjas selection, but has not yet received a response. American Oversight has sued the Arizona Senate for failing to produce records related to the audit.

An official with Dominion Voting Systems, whose vote-counting machines are being examined as part of the audit, told reporters: “The firms selected to conduct this audit are beyond biased. Publicly available information shows they are led by conspiracy theorists and QAnon supporters who have helped spread the Big Lie.”

Arizona Democrats and others concerned with the security and motives of the audit sued the Arizona Senate in an attempt to stop the audit, but settled on May 5 when guarantees were put in place for ballot security and voter privacy, as well as spaces for the press and others to observe.

On May 20, Hobbs, the secretary of state, announced that the voting machines turned over to Cyber Ninjas and other companies would need to be replaced because of uncertainty over what is being done to them.

In an apparent act of retaliation, Republicans in the Arizona House then stripped Hobbs of her ability “to defend election lawsuits,” and transferred that ability to Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich. Brnovich is a member of the Republican Attorneys General Association, a group that recently doubled down on Trump’s Big Lie, leading to an exodus of staff and leadership.

Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers (R), called the ongoing recount a “grift disguised as an audit” at a news conference earlier in the month, after Fann was forced to backtrack a claim that the county deleted a database and that ballots were missing.

Maricopa County internal and external reviews of the November 2020 election found zero evidence of fraud.

Fann told CNN last week that Arizona’s audit will be “a lesson in democracy” and “the basis of a gold standard.” History will almost assuredly prove her correct about that first part.

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Karen Fann - American Legislative Exchange Council

https://alec.org › person › karen-fann

Senate President Karen Fann. 2022 ALEC National Chairwoman, Arizona Senate ... Karen Fann is the second female Senate President in the history of Arizona.

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Boston Herald By KAREN FANN, National Chairwoman of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) June 1, 2022 The leaked draft Supreme Court opinion in the ...

ALEC chair Karen Fann on group's transparency - YouTube

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