The Republican-dominated Maricopa County Board of Supervisors on Monday denounced an ongoing audit of the 2020 election vote as a “sham” and a “con,” calling on the GOP-led state Senate to end the controversial recount that has been championed by former president Donald Trump.
In a fiery public meeting and subsequent letter to state Senate President Karen Fann, the board members said the audit has been inept, promoted falsehoods and defamed the public servants who ran the fall election.
Calling the process a “spectacle that is harming all of us,” the five members of the board — including four Republicans — asked the state Senate to recognize that it is essential to call off the audit, which officials have said is only about one-quarter complete.
“It is time to make a choice to defend the Constitution and the Republic,” they wrote. “We stand united together to defend the Constitution and the Republic in our opposition to the Big Lie. We ask everyone to join us in standing for the truth,” they added, using a term that refers to the false claim that the election was stolen.
Read the Maricopa County officials’ letter
In a calculated show of unity, they were joined by Maricopa’s other elected officials: the sheriff, a Democrat; and the Republican county recorder, who leads the elections office.
“Our state has become a laughingstock,” the county officials wrote. “Worse, this ‘audit’ is encouraging our citizens to distrust elections, which weakens our democratic republic.”
The pushback by Maricopa County officials amounts to their most vehement protest yet of the recount, which began in late April and is being conducted in Phoenix by a private Florida-based company, Cyber Ninjas, whose chief executive has previously echoed Trump’s false allegations that fraud tainted the 2020 election.
Jointly, the county officials agreed that they would refuse to attend a meeting that had been called Tuesday by Fann to discuss what she had termed “serious issues” with the vote that Cyber Ninjas claims to have identified.
“I will not be responding to any more requests from this sham process. Finish your audit and be ready to defend what you’re finding in a court of law,” Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers (R) said at the public meeting.
Supervisor Bill Gates (R) said at Monday’s meeting that no county official would attend Fann’s meeting.
“This board was going to be part of a political theater broadcast on live stream by OAN,” he said, referring to the pro-Trump news outlet One America News, whose hosts have been covering the audit while some have also simultaneously raised private donations to pay for it. “We’re not going to be a part of that.”
Mike Philipsen, a spokesman for Fann, said in an email that the Senate president had not seen Monday’s meeting in Maricopa and that she would respond to the county officials at her meeting Tuesday.
On Twitter, the chairman of the state Senate Judiciary Committee, Warren Petersen, wrote that he was “disappointed” Maricopa officials would not attend Tuesday’s meeting. He added that their letter included “unnecessary insults” and did not “fully answer” all of the questions posed by the audit.
Cyber Ninjas did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The sharp words from Maricopa officials came as Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), one of Trump’s closest allies, signaled discomfort with the Arizona audit Monday: “I accept the results of the election. I don’t know what the audit is all about in Arizona. I don’t know the details. But I am ready to move on.” He told reporters that although he favored election restructuring, “2020 is over for me.”
A cybersecurity expert who promoted claims of fraud in the 2020 election is leading the GOP-backed recount of millions of ballots in Arizona
The state Senate used a subpoena to remove the county’s voting machines and nearly 2.1 million ballots from a county facility late last month and handed them over to a team of contractors led by Cyber Ninjas. Since then, the companies have been conducting a slow hand recount of the ballots on the floor of the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum.
As part of the process, they also have incorporated other murky and ill-explained analysis, including physically examining the ballots using UV lights and microscopes. One official involved said the goal was to look for bamboo in the paper, which might indicate ballots were illegally smuggled from Asia.
Their procedures have been criticized as sloppy and constantly shifting by election experts sent as observers by Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D).
“You have rented out the once good name of the Arizona State Senate to grifters and con-artists, who are fundraising hard-earned money from our fellow citizens even as your contractors parade around the Coliseum, hunting for bamboo and something they call ‘kinematic artifacts,’ ” the county’s five supervisors wrote in their letter Monday. “None of these things are done in a serious audit. The result is that the Arizona Senate is held up to ridicule in every corner of the globe and our democracy is imperiled.”
have our limits,” he said.
In a fiery public meeting and subsequent letter to state Senate President Karen Fann, the board members said the audit has been inept, promoted falsehoods and defamed the public servants who ran the fall election.
Calling the process a “spectacle that is harming all of us,” the five members of the board — including four Republicans — asked the state Senate to recognize that it is essential to call off the audit, which officials have said is only about one-quarter complete.
“It is time to make a choice to defend the Constitution and the Republic,” they wrote. “We stand united together to defend the Constitution and the Republic in our opposition to the Big Lie. We ask everyone to join us in standing for the truth,” they added, using a term that refers to the false claim that the election was stolen.
Read the Maricopa County officials’ letter
In a calculated show of unity, they were joined by Maricopa’s other elected officials: the sheriff, a Democrat; and the Republican county recorder, who leads the elections office.
“Our state has become a laughingstock,” the county officials wrote. “Worse, this ‘audit’ is encouraging our citizens to distrust elections, which weakens our democratic republic.”
The pushback by Maricopa County officials amounts to their most vehement protest yet of the recount, which began in late April and is being conducted in Phoenix by a private Florida-based company, Cyber Ninjas, whose chief executive has previously echoed Trump’s false allegations that fraud tainted the 2020 election.
Jointly, the county officials agreed that they would refuse to attend a meeting that had been called Tuesday by Fann to discuss what she had termed “serious issues” with the vote that Cyber Ninjas claims to have identified.
“I will not be responding to any more requests from this sham process. Finish your audit and be ready to defend what you’re finding in a court of law,” Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers (R) said at the public meeting.
Supervisor Bill Gates (R) said at Monday’s meeting that no county official would attend Fann’s meeting.
“This board was going to be part of a political theater broadcast on live stream by OAN,” he said, referring to the pro-Trump news outlet One America News, whose hosts have been covering the audit while some have also simultaneously raised private donations to pay for it. “We’re not going to be a part of that.”
Mike Philipsen, a spokesman for Fann, said in an email that the Senate president had not seen Monday’s meeting in Maricopa and that she would respond to the county officials at her meeting Tuesday.
On Twitter, the chairman of the state Senate Judiciary Committee, Warren Petersen, wrote that he was “disappointed” Maricopa officials would not attend Tuesday’s meeting. He added that their letter included “unnecessary insults” and did not “fully answer” all of the questions posed by the audit.
Cyber Ninjas did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The sharp words from Maricopa officials came as Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), one of Trump’s closest allies, signaled discomfort with the Arizona audit Monday: “I accept the results of the election. I don’t know what the audit is all about in Arizona. I don’t know the details. But I am ready to move on.” He told reporters that although he favored election restructuring, “2020 is over for me.”
A cybersecurity expert who promoted claims of fraud in the 2020 election is leading the GOP-backed recount of millions of ballots in Arizona
The state Senate used a subpoena to remove the county’s voting machines and nearly 2.1 million ballots from a county facility late last month and handed them over to a team of contractors led by Cyber Ninjas. Since then, the companies have been conducting a slow hand recount of the ballots on the floor of the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum.
As part of the process, they also have incorporated other murky and ill-explained analysis, including physically examining the ballots using UV lights and microscopes. One official involved said the goal was to look for bamboo in the paper, which might indicate ballots were illegally smuggled from Asia.
Their procedures have been criticized as sloppy and constantly shifting by election experts sent as observers by Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D).
“You have rented out the once good name of the Arizona State Senate to grifters and con-artists, who are fundraising hard-earned money from our fellow citizens even as your contractors parade around the Coliseum, hunting for bamboo and something they call ‘kinematic artifacts,’ ” the county’s five supervisors wrote in their letter Monday. “None of these things are done in a serious audit. The result is that the Arizona Senate is held up to ridicule in every corner of the globe and our democracy is imperiled.”
have our limits,” he said.
