To The Eagle:

The most closely watched attempt by Republicans to examine the 2020 presidential election in a battleground state lost by former President Donald Trump is coming to an embarrassing end in Arizona.

These reviews go by various names: “audits” or “investigations,” sometimes with the word “forensic” attached. But their scope is not always well-defined or understood, even by those pushing them, and they really have one goal: to validate Trump's baseless claims that widespread fraud cost him the election, regardless of what the reviews might find.

Hypocritical partisan strategies to fund such spurious election reviews to “protect election integrity” have proven to be a lucrative campaign contribution scam. The Republican’s 6 month long “audit” has cost $9 million, paid for by deluded right wing Trump supporters. Add to that, $450 thousand in taxpayers money wasted by the Republican dominated senate to fund that travesty.

Cyber Ninjas, a discredited Florida based company with no experience or credentials in “forensic election audits” and led by election conspiracy theorist Doug Logan, was contracted by Senator Karen Fann, president of the AZ Republican legislature, to perform the bogus review. That “audit” was so transparently partisan and poorly performed that the legislature has demanded all public records related to it, from both Fann and Cyber Ninjas, who have refused, compelling the Democrats to sue.

The AZ Superior Court has ordered senator Fann’s committee and CyberNinja to release those documents but Fann and the Republicans have since spent an additional $500 thousand in public tax money to pay for legal fees while resisting the ordered full disclosure. Fann and her fellow Republican senators seem to think they’re exempt from the Arizona Public Records Law. What shenanigans are they hiding?

That ramshackle “audit” did indeed find voting irregularities. Of the 3.5 million voters who cast their ballots, six felons in the Pinal County jail somehow managed to vote, and three sisters together cast the early vote of their recently deceased mother.

Yep, there’s certainly been widespread fraud, but it’s not been committed by that state’s voters.

JB Bouchard

Puget Island