Audit Cover-Up? Maricopa County to Show Hidden Data or Lose Funding
The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors is so invested in leftist Democrats’ fight to keep integrity out of elections that it’s willing to defy legally enforceable subpoenas.
The forensic audit of the 2.1 million votes cast in Maricopa County in the November 2020 election is nearly complete. The auditors have requested critical information from the MCBOS and Dominion Voting Systems, such as the routers, critical passwords, chain of custody documents and more, in order to finish the job.
Neither entity has complied with state Senate subpoenas issued last month.
Earlier this month, Arizona state Sen. Sonny Borrelli filed a Senate Bill 1487 complaint with the state’s attorney general’s office. Attorney General Mark Brnovich then opened an investigation into the board’s and Dominion’s noncompliance.
SB 1487 allows any member of the state legislature to request an investigation into an alleged violation of a state law or the state’s constitution by the “governing body of a county, city or town.”
The attorney general’s office has 30 days to investigate the complaint and issue a report. If it is found that a law has been violated, the defendant has 30 days to resolve the violation.
If the defendant fails to resolve the issue by the deadline, the attorney general will “notify the state treasurer who shall withhold and redistribute state shared monies from the county, city or town” until it is resolved.
The Arizona Attorney General sent this letter to the Maricopa Board of Supervisors on August 6th. I can also confirm there is an open 1487 Investigation listed on the Arizona Attorney General website. Now we wait 30 days. pic.twitter.com/lwBDSMfzaQ
— Wendy Rogers (@WendyRogersAZ) August 7, 2021
On Thursday, Brnovich issued a news release that said his office had determined the MCBOS “is in violation of state law for failing to comply with the Arizona Senate’s legislative subpoena related to the 2020 election audit.”
“We are notifying the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors that it must fully comply with the Senate’s subpoena as required by the law. Our courts have spoken. The rule of law must be followed,” Brnovich said.
Further, the news release stated, “The Maricopa County Superior Court previously affirmed that the Senate has the power to issue legislative subpoenas related to election reform and has broad discretion to determine what additional information is needed.”
“When MCBOS refused to comply earlier this year, the Court ruled the subpoenas did not violate the separation of powers principles, and producing subpoenaed materials would not violate confidentiality,” the release continued.
“The majority of MCBOS publicly welcomed that decision after it came out and chose not to appeal … The legal principles announced in that decision are no less persuasive or binding today.”
Our office just notified the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors that it is in violation of state law for failing to comply with AZ Senate’s subpoena. The County has 30 days to change course or lose state-shared funds. The rule of law must be followed.https://t.co/IpJwWZmLxX
— Mark Brnovich (@GeneralBrnovich) August 26, 2021
The MCBOS has 30 days to “resolve the violation.” If it fails to do so, “the AGO, in accordance with state law, will notify the Arizona Treasurer to withhold state revenue from Maricopa County until MCBOS complies.”
According to Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem, a Republican, the MCBOS stands to lose up to $61 million in state funding if it fails to comply.
$61M Penalty faced by Maricopa County, Pima Election Investigation, and… – https://t.co/a9vpaJKi4e pic.twitter.com/89tnB0UDwv
— Mark Finchem for AZ Secretary of State (@RealMarkFinchem) August 26, 2021
Finchem discussed the situation with the War Room’s Steve Bannon on Monday. Finchem said that for him, the question has always been, “What do they not know or what is it that they know that they’re afraid of?”
“Now it’s in the hands of the attorney general. The attorney general will work to compel the delivery of the things that have not been delivered yet,” Finchem said.
Finchem told Bannon he has been involved in an investigation of the November 2020 election down in Pima County. Together with Maricopa County, he said, the counties account for over 80 percent of ballots cast in the state.
The MCBOS has gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent the Arizona Senate from obtaining these materials.
Members of the MCBOS have mocked the Senate’s forensic audit. Jack Sellers, the chairman of the MCBOS, sent a derisive letter to the senators on Aug. 2. He wrote, “It is now August of 2021. The election of November 2020 is over. If you haven’t figured out that the election in Maricopa County was free, fair, and accurate yet, I’m not sure you ever will.”
“The Board has real work to do and little time to entertain this adventure in never-never land. Please finish whatever it is that you are doing and release whatever it is you are going to release.”
“There was no fraud. There wasn’t an injection of ballots from Asia, nor was there a satellite that beamed votes into our election equipment. It’s time for all elected officials to tell the truth and stop encouraging conspiracies,” Sellers concluded.
This would be news to anyone who attended or read about the Arizona Senate’s July 15 briefing during which the auditors presented their preliminary findings.
The biggest takeaway from the briefing was that over 74,000 mail-in ballots were received and counted in Maricopa County’s November election results, but there is “no clear record of them being sent.”
The audit found that 18,000 residents who had cast ballots in November were reportedly scrubbed from the voter list shortly after the election.
According to Doug Logan, the CEO of audit firm Cyber Ninjas, “They were on the voter rolls, they showed as voted and then they were removed. And there could be a good logical explanation for that, but it seems like a large number to immediately have after an election be removed.”
Additionally, auditors reported the names of 11,326 voters (who cast ballots) did not appear on the Nov. 7 voter roll, but did appear on the Dec. 4 voter roll.
A video of the July 15 hearing can be viewed here.
[firefly_poll]
During an interview in late July, Arizona Senate President Karen Fann told The Western Journal’s editor-in-chief George Upper the auditors discovered the board does not have the passwords to its own election machinery.
Rather, Fann said Dominion has them. “So Maricopa County doesn’t even have control over their election system. Only Dominion has those passwords. They have 24-hour-a-day access to those computers. Come and go as you want.”
Strange, huh?
Memo to the MCBOS: The clock is ticking.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
