Ten months after Donald Trump lost his bid for 2020 reelection in Arizona, Arizona Senate Republicans hired supporters to present the results of an unprecedented partisan electoral review. This is the culmination of a bizarre search to find evidence to support the false claim of the former president that he lost because he was fraud.
The review team has retracted nearly every allegation so far. Arizona election officials and others across the country expect more from the review team, which they claim is biased, incompetent, and obsessed with absurd conspiracy theories.
“Every time Trump or his supporters have been given an opportunity to prove this case they have swung, missed,” stated Ben Ginsberg. Ginsberg is a Republican election lawyer and vocal critic of Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.
This unprecedented partisan review, which focuses on Arizona’s largest county Maricopa, is funded and led largely by people who believe Trump is the winner despite numerous lawsuits and extraordinary scrutiny that did not find any problems that could affect the outcome. They have ignored the specific procedures for counting votes in Arizona law.
Although widely mocked by the public, the Arizona review is now a model that Trump supporters are keen to copy in other swing states where Biden won. The Democratic attorney general of Pennsylvania sued Thursday in an attempt to block a subpoena issued by the GOP for a wide range of election materials. A retired conservative justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court is leading an investigation into 2020’s election. threatened this week to subpoena officials who do not comply.
Regardless of what Arizona reviews and other reports may claim, they can’t reverse Biden’s victory.
Arizona’s top Republicans, Doug Logan and Cyber Ninjas CEO, will be presenting the findings to the public. Despite his previous work in promoting “stop the steal”, he was appointed the head of the review committee.
Shiva Ayyadurai will be discussing his review of mail ballot signatures. He has a loyal following who promotes COVID-19 misinformation via social media. It is not clear why he is qualified. Ayyadurai is also known as Dr. Shiva by his fans. He has a Ph.D., but is not a doctor.
Ben Cotton, an expert in computer forensics, will present his analysis of the vote-counting machines. Cotton has refuted his claim that an important election database had been deleted.
Ken Bennett, an ex-Republican secretary of State, and Randy Pullen (former chairman of the Arizona Republican Party), are also scheduled to speak. They served as liaisons between Senate and review team.
Although they have been tight-lipped about the results, Bennett said to a conservative radio host that he would “have a short report on where Maricopa County failed meet and comply with state statutes or election procedures.”
Late Thursday, a document purporting to be a draft of Cyber Ninjas’ report was circulated. The document claimed that a hand count confirmed Biden’s victory, and showed that he had gained 360 votes. It also highlighted a number of alleged flaws and suggested changes to state election laws.
Republican Senate President Karen Fann stated in a text message that the document was a “leaked draft from three day ago,” but didn’t dispute its authenticity. She did not disclose whether the draft’s findings had changed in the course of the week. This was citing a confidentiality agreement.
She said, “I have signed an NDA.” “I will keep my word.”
Trump’s claim that there was widespread election fraud costs him the election, is disproven by the hand count’s confirmation of Biden’s victory. This also contradicts some of Trump’s closest allies’ claims that voting machines from Dominion Voting Systems (used in Maricopa County) changed votes.
“Unfortunately, however, the report is also littered by errors & faulty conclusions regarding how Maricopa County conducted 2020 General Election,” Maricopa County officials stated on Twitter.
The 4-1 Republican-controlled Maricopa County Board of Supervisors has vigorously supported the vote count. Republican Chairman Jack Sellers called the review “a fraud disguised as an audit.” GOP Supervisor Bill Gates stated Thursday that because the review relies on funding from Trump allies, the results won’t be credible.
Gates stated, “The people funding this audit, and the people who called for it, we all know exactly what they want it find.” “They want it find that Donald Trump has won Maricopa County.”
The Senate has committed to spending $150,000 for the audit and security and facility costs. This is a small amount compared to the $5.7 million that Trump’s allies contributed in late July.
Clint Hickman is another Republican county supervisor. He has been the subject a bizarre conspiracy theory that claimed a fire at his family’s Phoenix egg farm west of Phoenix that killed 120,000 chickens was a plot to destroy evidence supporting Trump’s victory.
Maricopa County’s vote was counted in front bipartisan observers. Also, required audits were performed to ensure that voting machines are working properly. Spot checks of partial hand counts revealed a perfect match.
Federally certified election experts conducted two additional post-election reviews and found no evidence that voting machines were connected to the internet or switched votes. Fann and other supporters of her partisan review were not persuaded by the Board of Supervisors, who ordered these extraordinary reviews to show Trump backers that there were no issues.
Experts in election law predict that the report could be misinterpreted to claim something nefarious, or make minor errors into serious allegations of wrongdoing.
David Becker, an ex-lawyer in the U.S. Department of Justice voting Section, said that they are minor procedural issues and that trying to magnify them to the point of casting doubt on the election was nothing but sore loserism. He founded the Center for Election Innovation and Research.
Biden won Maricopa County with 45,109 votes and Arizona with 10,457 votes. Becker stated that minor procedural issues would not affect a margin this large.
Logan made a number of claims in July based on his misinterpretation of election data. Logan claimed that 74,000 ballots were not received, but that they were sent. Trump repeated the claim. But they offered innocuous explanations .
The Friday report is the result of a process that started almost a year ago. After their claims of election fraud had been repeatedly rejected in court, Trump and his associates searched tirelessly for a way of preventing the certification of Biden’s win on Jan. 6. Two of the most powerful Republicans in Arizona’s Senate passed a broad subpoena. It included all ballots in Maricopa County as well as the machines used to count them. Also, it contained a wealth of election data. They stated that they would use the materials for a “forensic audit.”
Three months after Biden’s election, a court battle over the validity and validity of the subpoena delayed delivery of materials to April. Although the review was expected to take 60 days, it has been repeatedly delayed by Logan and four other members of his team contracting COVID-19.
Trump supporters are energized by the review, hoping it will prove Trump was the legitimate winner and allow him to return to the White House. Despite extraordinary scrutiny that found no fraud that could have affected the election’s outcome, the review has been a great boost to Trump supporters.
Fann, Republican Senate President, said that the review was not meant to reverse the 2020 election, but rather to find ways for the Legislature to improve election laws.
Even in the Senate, not all Republicans trust the results of the review.
GOP Senator Paul Boyer stated Thursday that they will have to justify their existence. “And God knows what it is.”
