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Election Theft

Maricopa election audit team says ‘deleted files’ recovered

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The Arizona Senate held a special meeting Tuesday, during which auditors downplayed prior assertions in a controversial review of the 2020 election that someone might have deleted a main database from the Election Management System last month, now insisting they found the data.

Arizona Senate President Karen Fann joined fellow Republican Sen. Warren Petersen, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, as well as Senate audit liaison Ken Bennett, Cyber Ninjas owner Doug Logan, and CyFir founder Ben Cotton for an update and to address the refusal by Maricopa County officials to attend, as declared in a letter on Monday that castigated the 2020 election audit.

“I discovered a [Master File Table] that clearly indicated that the database directory was deleted from that server,” Cotton said Tuesday, adding, “So all of this, however, may be a moot point because subsequently, I’ve been able to recover all of those deleted files that I have access to that data.”

The audit, which organizers now say they expect to conclude by the end of June, was sharply criticizedduring a meeting held by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors on Monday, which was convening to clarify the “serious issues” raised by Fann sent in a letter to Chairman Jack Sellers on Wednesday, one of them being the claim of a deleted election database.

“That would be a crime,” Sellers wrote in response on Thursday. “And it’s not true.”

The claim was also levied by the Maricopa Arizona Audit account in a post on Wednesday, which alleged, “Maricopa County deleted a directory full of election databases from the 2020 election cycle,” calling it “spoliation of evidence!” The account previously pinned the tweet at the top of the account but has since removed it from its placement.

Fann’s letter last week came with an invite for the Maricopa County officials to attend Tuesday’s Senate meeting and clear up concerns regarding the chain of custody of elections equipment as well as continued requests by the audit team to access the virtual copies of the county’s Wi-Fi routers as part of its full forensic audit.

County officials shot down Tuesday’s meeting invite and defended the position that providing router images could present a huge security risk to the county’s “most critical data.”

Petersen addressed Fann and the auditors’ desire to gain access to the router images during the Tuesday meeting, asking, “Mr. Cotton, are you confident that you could look at the routers without risking any security concerns or breaches to the county?”

“Yes,” Cotton replied, noting, “[CyFir] routinely work for some of the largest companies in the world … And we have never had an exposure of leak or any type of data being emitted from our custody.”

Last week, Fann levied threats to subpoena multiple county officials in an effort to obtain the routers for the audit but appeared to back off by simply inviting Maricopa officials to the meeting Tuesday.

Election materials for the audit, which includes a review of 2.1 million ballots in the county that includes Phoenix, have been transferred to a secure facility on the fairgrounds near the Veterans Memorial Coliseum, where the audit is taking place, while procedures are temporarily paused to allow high school graduation ceremonies at the venue this week. The process is set to resume on Monday.

The hand recount, which focuses on the presidential election and U.S. Senate contest, will not change the results, as officials in the state have already certified President Joe Biden‘s victory and others. Fann has insisted that the audit is meant to restore trust in the system and influence potential changes to the law.

Democrats, including Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, have criticized the audit and pointed out that the results from two previous audits, conducted for the GOP-majority Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, showed no irregularities in the county’s 2020 election. “They’re working to make it harder for people to vote because they don’t like the election outcome,” Hobbs said on CNN, referring to election bills across the country being pushed by Republicans.

Former President Donald Trump, who has boasted claims the election was “stolen” from him, has expressed public support for the audit efforts in Maricopa County. On Saturday, he published a statement claiming the “entire Database of Maricopa County in Arizona has been DELETED!”

The Washington Examiner contacted the MCBS and the Arizona Senate but did not immediately receive a response.

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