Senate President Karen Fann has her hands full this week, as chaos reigns around the ongoing audit of Maricopa County’s handling of the 2020 General Election.
On Tuesday, Fann issued a statement about a recent controversy involving the public disrespect shown by some audit officials toward Ken Bennett, her hand-picked Senate Audit Liaison.
Bennett, a former Arizona Secretary of State and former Speaker of the House, has staunchly argued that the ongoing audit is necessary to restore voter confidence in Maricopa County and Arizona’s election process. He has just as staunchly pushed for transparency about what was happening with the audit activities.
Even several “anti-audit” officials within Maricopa County have publicly recognized Bennett’s credibility and effort in trying to ensure the public knows what is being done by Cyber Ninjas, the inexperienced, out-of-state contractors who are reportedly earning millions from private donations to conduct the audit but only $150,000 from the State Senate.
Bennett admitted Monday he has been locked out of the audit location in what appears to be a power struggle with Cyber Ninjas and subcontractors, all of whom stand to rake in millions more if they are able to take their audit operations on the road to other states. He was prepared Monday to resign from the audit, but Fann said in her Tuesday statement that he will remain involved in the “draft and final reports.”
Part of the power struggle stems from Bennett’s admission that he shared a limited amount of audit information with an outside election expert, who then leaked it to the media. Bennett’s actions stem from his belief that a third count of the ballots (not the votes) should have been conducted by an independent party because the Cyber Ninjas ballot count reportedly did not match Maricopa County’s ballot count.
In public statements, Bennett said he worried that allowing anyone connected with the audit to perform the third count could lead to “forced balancing.” The announcement of Bennett’s lockout came from Randy Pullen, who was assisting Bennett with liaison work. Pullen told the media that the directive barring Bennett came from Fann herself, a subject the Senate President completely ignored in her Tuesday statement.
Fann did note that Pullen has overseen the completion of the third ballot count. It is unclear whether an independent party conducted the count. Fann also called it “irresponsible” for Bennett to have disclosed “partial information” because the data is not “confirmed.”
However, Fann presided over a public audit update earlier this month at which Cyber Ninjas’ owner Doug Logan did just that when he cited preliminary data which suggested Maricopa County somehow received more than 70,000 early voting ballots than what was mailed out.
Within minutes, county election officials released information disputing Cyber Ninjas’ data, explaining that early ballots include in-person voting before Nov. 3.
Another thing Fann did not address in her statement is the confusion about why a new subpoena she and Sen. Warren Peterson issued to Maricopa County on Monday included a demand for images of the roughly 1.9 million early ballot affidavit envelopes.
Arizona Daily Independent was informed back in April that the Maricopa County Elections Department provided that data to the audit team as part of an initial January subpoena.
“The Senate subpoena commanded the county provide images of the early ballot envelopes,” spokesperson Megan Gilbertson emailed on April 23. “I can confirm that we complied and the Senate is in possession of those images.”
Other audit-related developments on Tuesday included Twitter’s decision to suspend several accounts for violations of the platform’s rules on “platform manipulation and spam.” Among those shuttered was the Senate audit’s official Twitter account, @ArizonaAudit.
Twitter also slammed the door Tuesday on @AuditWarRoom along with similar accounts related to five other states, and announced its earlier suspension of the Voices & Votes account co-founded by OANN reporter Christina Bobb is now permanent. The reporter founded the group to collect donations for the private companies contracted to conduct the Arizona Senate’s audit.
The Twitter account for American Project’s Fund The Audit is also now suspended. It too solicited private donations which would be used to finance various audit activities.