Tuesday was a busy day for the Senate’s audit of how Maricopa County conducted the 2020 General Election, but all of the activities occurred away from the audit office.
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich was asked Tuesday by Sen. Sonny Borelli (R-LD5) to investigate the Maricopa County Board of Supervisor’s refusal to cooperate with the Senate’s audit, including the county’s decision to ignore parts of two subpoenas issued by Senate President Karen Fann and Senate Judiciary Chair Warren Peterson.
If Maricopa County’s actions are found to be a violation of state law, the county could be penalized by a loss of its portion of Arizona’s shared sales taxes. Public records show the county received more than $700 million in such revenue in the fiscal year ending June 30.
Also on Tuesday, a Maricopa County judge ordered Fann to comply with a public records request related to audit documents.
Judge Michael Kemp of the Maricopa County Superior Court issued a six-page ruling in a legal challenge brought in May by American Oversight after Fann directed the Senate’s attorneys to deny access to several audit-related documents in the possession of Cyber Ninjas and its subcontractors.
The judge ruled that while the businesses contracted to perform the audit were private companies, they are acting as “agents” of the Senate, which used $150,000 of taxpayer money toward the costs of the audit.
“Whether these public documents are in the actual physical control or possession of Senate Defendants is irrelevant,” to whether those documents must be preserved and released, Kemp wrote. “Willful blindness does not relieve Senate Defendants from their duties and obligations” under Arizona’s public records law.
The Senate’s attorneys have indicated plans to ask the Arizona Court of Appeals to overturn Kemp’s ruling.
And in another audit-related public records challenge, Judge Joseph Mikitish heard arguments Tuesday on whether to dismiss a lawsuit filed against Maricopa County in March by AUDIT USA, a nonprofit corporation.
AUDIT USA, which stands for Americans United for Democracy, Integrity, and Transparency, submitted a public records request earlier this year seeking copies of the nearly 2.1 ballot images created by the Dominion Voting Systems software during the 2020 general election.
It is the images -not the original ballots themselves- which are “read” by Dominion’s tabulation machines to count the votes cast in each race.
The group wants to conduct an independent tabulation of the images, but Deputy County Attorney Joseph La Rue argued to the judge that county officials would break the law by releasing the images under a public records request. Mikitish is expected to issue a ruling later this week.
Meanwhile, the CEO of Dominion Voting Systems informed Fann on Aug. 2 that the company will not produce or allow inspection of documents demanded by a recent Senate subpoena. Maricopa County leases election equipment from Dominion.
Also on Monday, Sellers continued his criticism of the Senate’s audit by launching another attack against Cyber Ninjas.
“The reason you haven’t finished your ‘audit’ is because you hired people who have no experience and little understanding of how processional elections are run,” Sellers wrote, adding it is time “for all elected officials to tell the truth and stop encouraging conspiracies.”
Cyber Ninjas has also come under scrutiny by the Democrat-controlled Oversight Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. A July 28 deadline was given to Cyber Ninjas to provide the Committee several documents related to its handling of the audit.
Among the information demanded by the committee was a list of donors who pledged nearly $5.7 million toward the cost of the Arizona Senate’s audit. On July 28, a spokesman for Cyber Ninjas released the names of five organizations involved in the fundraising efforts.
There has been no announcement as to whether the company provided any of the other information requested by the House Oversight Committee.