A Big Week For The ‘Big Lie’ MAGA/QAnon Trump ‘Election Truthers’

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Christmas arrives early this week for the MAGA/QAnon Trump cult “election truthers.” The long overdue Cyber Ninja “fraudit” report is supposed to be released this week just ahead of the next seditious insurrection rally in Washington, D.C. on Saturday. Coincidence? We think not. It’s all part of fascist propaganda stagecraft.

Remember how Senator Karen Fann said that the Cyber Ninjas could not go door-to-door to conduct a canvass of voters? In Response To Justice Dept., Arizona Senate Says Plan To Canvass Voters Is On Hold. Yeah, she lied. They just outsourced it to MAGA/QAnon Trump cult “election truthers,” led by a failed legislative candidate, Liz Harris. “It wasn’t Cyber Ninjas, so there!” Fann said in her snottiest, condescending tone.

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The MAGA/QAnon Trump cult “election truthers” gave us a preview of the coming attraction last week with the release of their so-called canvass report. It was every bit the unprofessional and unbelievable piece of manufactured garbage that one would expect from these folks.

The Arizona Mirror reports, Voter ‘canvass’ features big allegations, zero evidence, outright falsehoods:

According to a report issued by [MAGA/QAnon Trump cult “election truthers”] who have spent much of the past year since the election knocking on doors across Maricopa County and asking people about their voting history [i.e., voter intimidation and harassment], the address in Goodyear is a “vacant lot” – where a nearly 3,000-square-foot house sits on, and two people cast ballots by mail in the November election.

The Arizona Mirror visited the address in Goodyear and found a house that is clearly visible from the street. A low-slung wall surrounds the lot, and the house number can be seen from the dirt road that leads to the gate at the front of the property. The house is also visible on satellite images on Google Maps that can be easily found with a few simple keystrokes.

A few more keystrokes is all it takes to access property records from the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office that show two owners who took possession of the property in 2018. The house itself was built in 2005, those records show. The Maricopa County Elections Department says those two owners, along with a third person who is registered to vote there, voted by mail in the 2020 general election.

After months of hype among adherents of false conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was rigged, a long-awaited report on a volunteer “canvassing” effort of Maricopa County voters landed with a dull thud on Wednesday when the activists behind it made a series of breathless allegations without any evidence to back them up — highlighted by two specific claims that were almost immediately proven false.

The report issued by [Maga/QAnon cultist] and failed legislative candidate Liz Harris claimed that more than a quarter million votes from the November election were suspicious. The claims were based on information that volunteer canvassers — who joined the effort by filling out a form on the website itsmellsfunny.com — gleaned from thousands of voters, the report claimed, many of whom said they cast ballots in the election but that county election records show didn’t vote. Others said they didn’t vote, but records show them having cast ballots in the election.

Harris’s report includes no corroborating information that could be used to verify the claims. It states that the canvass team can make sworn affidavits available that support the findings. [Just like the MAGA/QAnon “election truther” affidavits the courts laughed out of court in over 60 cases last fall?] But Harris would not provide those affidavits to the Arizona Mirror, and hung up without answering questions when contacted by phone.

You mean affiants like this MAGA/QAnon “election truther,” Melissa Carone, Rudy Giuliani’s “star witness” in Michigan? Trump’s Star ‘Election Fraud’ Witness Was a Glorious Train Wreck.

Please provide us with the name and addresses of your volunteer canvassers so they can be referred to the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division for investigation of possible voter intimidation and harassment. And just why isn’t our feckless Attorney General, Mark Brnovich, investigating these people? His office has an election integrity unit that does absolutely nothing. They should have put a stop to this.

The report does not provide names or addresses that could be used to verify the voters’ alleged claims, nor does it indicate that the canvass team checked their claims against county records.

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer said Harris hasn’t provided any affidavits or other corroborating evidence to his office, either.

Richer said that he reached out to Harris to discuss her efforts and her concerns. The two met in March, and he asked her to provide him with some examples of the alleged problems her team had found — he suggested an initial list of 100 incidents — so his office could look into them.

Maricopa County Assessor Eddie Cook spoke with Harris about her efforts several weeks ago, as well. Both are precinct committeemen in Legislative District 17, where Harris ran for a legislative seat last year, and Cook approached her to talk about the canvass and ask for data. He agreed to pass on several questions from her to Richer — one concerned the debunked conspiracy theory that the county’s ballot tabulation machines were connected to the internet during the election, the recorder said — and hoped that would persuade her to provide data that could be used to prove or disprove her claims.

Neither official ever received data from Harris.

Cook said he emailed Harris again after she issued her report and informed her that they’d found two serious errors on her report covers, and asked for information that could be used to investigate her claims about her allegations. She did not provide any information, Cook said.

“That was the danger that I didn’t want to have happen, because that will get out there nationally, and it’s inaccurate,” Cook said of the false claim on the Harris report’s cover. “It’s misleading. It’s not true. And that’s just going to add unfortunately more fuel to the fire that is not accurate.”

Within minutes, specific claims proved false

Only two claims from the report included information that could be used to verify them. Both were shown to be demonstrably false within minutes of their release.

“Wednesday represents the first two data points we had ever seen out of Liz’s effort,” Richer said, referencing Harris’s report. “Oh-for-two is not a great way to start.”

The problems with Harris’s claim about the Goodyear address, which was on the cover of the report, were quickly discovered. ABC15 reporter Garrett Archer pointed out on Twitter that the lot had a house on it, and that county property records clearly listed the owner.

Harris’s group responded by reissuing the report with a different cover image purporting to show another address where a ballot was cast from a vacant lot. That second address, in Tempe, currently is a vacant lot, according to county officials.

But before that, it was a mobile home park. Cook and Richer released a joint statement Friday morning showing an aerial photo of the park. The assessor’s office said the property was sold in February 2020, a month after a demolition permit was filed for the property. The property again changed ownership in March of this year.

Elections Department spokeswoman Megan Gilbertson told the Mirror that 15 people were previously registered to vote at that address. The ballot referenced in the Harris report was from one former resident of the mobile home park who registered to vote there in 2016 and requested that his early ballot for 2020 be mailed to a temporary address, which is permitted by law, Gilbertson said. Doh!

Harris’s report was full of other allegations about alleged fraud or suspicious votes in the 2020 election, though none were attached to any voters’ names or addresses that could be used to verify them.

The canvassing team claimed it attempted to contact 11,708 voters, ultimately getting information on 4,570 and personally interviewing 964, the report claimed. Of those, 330 said they voted, but county records said they didn’t cast a ballot in the general election. Based on the figure of 505,709 registered voters in Maricopa County who didn’t cast ballots in November, Harris’s group extrapolated and alleged that 173,104 voters “had their votes stolen.”

Harris provided no evidence that a single person cast a ballot that was not recorded by the county.

The report also claimed that there were 96,389 “ghost votes.” The figure is based on 164 people whom Harris’s group said it identified who had mail-in votes tallied from their addresses cast by people who were unknown to them and not living at their homes. Again, the report provided no evidence that any such “ghost votes” were cast.

Because there is not even a shred of proof or evidence, Richer said the allegations shouldn’t be taken seriously. He noted that previous audits and investigations have shown that the election was accurate and not affected by fraud.

“So far, zero accurate claims have been made. Two have been offered. Zero have been accurate. So far, we don’t have a problem,” he said of the Harris report.

Um, Mr. Richer, that’s what makes this the “Big Lie” fascist propaganda.

Harris’s efforts are separate from the so-called audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County that Senate President Karen Fann ordered [Sure they are. Prove it]. Harris has, however, been a vocal supporter of Fann’s review and an enthusiastic promoter of the false allegations that the election was rigged against former President Donald Trump.

The audit team initially planned to conduct canvassing of its own, but Fann indefinitely halted that proposal after the U.S. Department of Justice warned that it could violate voter intimidation laws in the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

This asshat Liz Harris should be ridiculed and condemned by every right thinking person.

The Arizona Mirror continues. Beset by delays, ‘audit’ team plans to submit full draft report to Senate [this] week:

The [QAnon conspircy] team that conducted the controversial bogus “fraudit” of the 2020 general election in Maricopa County plans to submit its full draft report to the Senate [this] week, after several weeks [months] of delays.

Randy Pullen, a spokesman for the self-styled election audit, said the team expects to submit the draft report to the Senate on Wednesday or Thursday.

The report has been plagued by a series of delays. Previously, the team planned to submit it by Aug. 20, but that plan was derailed after audit team leader Doug Logan and two other members of a five-person team tested positive for COVID-19. Senate President Karen Fann announced at the time that a partial report would come several days later, with the remainder still to come, but the partial report was never submitted.

When the “audit” began in late April, Logan said he expected it to be completed by mid-May.

A Senate team [of MAGA/QAnon cultists] will review the report and recommend changes before the final report is issued. Pullen said the Senate team will meet on Monday to discuss the timeline.

One of the budget bills approved by lawmakers and Gov. Doug Ducey in July tasks members of the Senate Government Committee with reviewing the audit team’s report and recommending changes to state law based on those findings.

The MAGA/QAnon Trump cult red cap thugs have already begun attacking their own kind, the GQP Queen of Voter Suppression Michelle Ugenti-Rita, because she publicly raised doubts about their bogus “fraudit.” Audit supporter threatens Ugenti-Rita:

Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita today tweeted a threat she received from a supporter of the Senate’s audit of the 2020 election.

Ugenti-Rita, a Scottsdale Republican who has questioned the credibility of the audit, shared with her more than 8,000 Twitter followers the email that contained misspellings and grammatical errors, but the message was clear.

“You better do the right thing or your going to feel the consequences,” the person, identified as “Matt Boster,” wrote.

Ugenti-Rita said she got the email Thursday and she has passed it on to police.

Ugenti-Rita said in an interview with Arizona Capitol Times the threat came through her legislative account and that her phone began blowing up with a surge of increasingly worse and volatile messages suggesting she’s to blame for delays in concluding the audit.

Ugenti-Rita said she’s as frustrated as anyone about the delays in releasing the final report and she fears something serious will happen if it isn’t released soon.

“This has got to conclude, it’s getting scary out there,” she said.

She said she made the threat public to bring attention to the volatile environment right now and in hopes to protect everyone.

“This is something deeper, part of a bigger sentiment that is brewing,” Ugenti-Rita said…

… She said, oblivious to the contribution of her own role as the GQP Queen of Voter Suppression.

She said investigators with the state will be trying to track down the sender and will do a risk assessment of her home.

“My family’s safety is my #1 priority & I will NOT tolerate anyone going after me or my family,” she tweeted. “Due to misinformation & the unmet expectations of the public surrounding the audit, threats like this will unfortunately continue.”

Ugenti-Rita’s tweet came a few hours after Senate President Karen Fann disclosed in a press release a senator had been threatened, but she provided no details.

“No matter where a person stands on the issue of an audit of the 2020 vote in Maricopa County, or any other matter of public policy, making a threat to a legislator or their family is completely unacceptable,” Fann said in the written statement.

The email sender said he knows where the senator and her family lives and where she shops for groceries.

“… you have one chance to give the American people the audit report or were coming for you,” the email read.

[U]genti-Rita incurred the wrath of many of those who believe the election was stolen after she changed her mind about the audit.

The senator said she backed the idea when it was first proposed after Joe Biden outpolled Donald Trump in Arizona by 10,457 votes statewide, winning the state’s 11 electoral votes. That included the Democrat getting 45,109 more votes than the Republican incumbent in Maricopa County.

All that changed, she said, amid questions about how the audit was being conducted, including Fann’s hiring of Cyber Ninjas, a firm that had never done similar work.

“Sadly, it’s now become clear that the audit has been botched,” Ugenti-Rita said in a Twitter post in July.

“The total lack of competence by Fann over the last five months has deprived the voters of Arizona a comprehensive accounting of the 2020 election,” she continued. “That’s inexcusable, but it shows what can happen when Republicans do not take election integrity seriously.”

She also came under fire for refusing to support a proposal by [the QAnon Queen] Sen. Kelly Townsend, R-Mesa, that essentially was a wish list of fixes the Mesa lawmaker said needed to be made in how elections are administered.

For example, the amendment brought up during Senate debate sought to set up a procedure for county or state prosecutors to get involved when there is an inconsistency between someone’s signature on an early ballot and what is on file with the county recorder.

It also dealt with a requirement that people who register to vote in Arizona must cancel their registration in the state from which they moved. And it provided that anyone who votes at a polling place get a paper receipt showing their ballot has been accepted.

But Ugenti-Rita said many of these issues never got a public airing in the Government Committee which she chairs. and she said it makes little sense to make massive changes in election laws now, before the Senate-ordered audit is completed and recommendations are made for necessary fixes to the law.
Her refusal left Townsend’s amendment without sufficient votes for approval.

Ugenti-Rita, who is running for secretary of state, said she has supported measure to protect election integrity. [As if.]

About that … the leader of the coup d’etat on January 6 is backing one of the organizers of the seditious insurrection on January 6 in the GQP primary.

The MAGA/QAnon Trump cult red cap thugs have regularly been making threats to public officials and election workers.

While the threat Ugenti-Rita received Thursday appears to be the most recent example, she is not the first elected official to receive threats related to the 2020 election or the audit. Sen. Paul Boyer, R-Glendale, had to get police protection and temporarily leave his home after joining the Democrats in February to vote against holding Maricopa County supervisors in contempt and potentially arresting them; and Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and her staff have also received threats from election fraud believers, prompting her to request protection from Dept. of Public Safety officers.

Maricopa County supervisors, who have opposed the audit from the start, have also received threats, and some lawmakers such as House Speaker Rusty Bowers, R-Mesa, and Sen. T.J. Shope, R-Coolidge, have had protesters show up at their homes, Shope most recently due to his opposition to HB2190, which would have barred private businesses from asking employees or customers about vaccination status.

This crazy week will end on Saturday with a Capitol rally which seeks to rewrite Jan. 6 by exalting rioters. Sedition, insurrection and treason are now the highest ideals of the GQP. These domestic terrorists now represent the greatest national security threat to the United States. Every last one of them needs to be removed from elected office.





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