Last July, Donald Trump gave an unhinged speech to Turning Point Action in Arizona. here’s the words of the lunatic:
“The county has, for whatever reason, also refused to produce the network routers. We want the routers, Sonny, Wendy, we got to get those routers, please. The routers. Come on, Kelly, we can get those routers. Those routers. You know what? We’re so beyond the routers, there’s so many fraudulent votes without the routers. But if you got those routers, what that will show, and they don’t want to give up the routers. They don’t want to give them. They are fighting like hell. Why are these commissioners fighting not to give the routers?”
Note: He is referring to MAGA/QAnon cult member election deniers Sonny Borrelli, Wendy Rogers and Kelly Townsend, who regularly promote his Big Lie.
Donald Trump’s Big Lie, “but the routers” in Maricopa County, has been entirely debunked. Debunking Trump’s Latest Arizona Election Claims:
No Evidence Arizona Voting System Was ‘Hacked’
In his July 16 statement, Trump claimed the Arizona Senate hearing showed that “all the access logs to the machines were wiped, and the election server was hacked during the election.” A day earlier, Trump claimed the hearing “revealed that the voting system was breached or hacked (by who?).”
At the July 15 hearing, Senate President Karen Fann said Maricopa County “sent letters out to the voters and saying, ‘Please be aware our system’s been hacked or breached, and we believe none of your personal information has been disclosed.’”
But the county said there was no hack, and it isn’t possible for hackers to change votes because the ballot tabulation equipment is a “closed air gapped system,” meaning it isn’t connected to the internet.
“This is false,” the county said in a July 16 tweet. “The event in question involved an individual inappropriately accessing and downloading publicly available info. The website is in no way connected to the Election Management System.”
In fact, the county in February released the results of the independent forensic audit of its ballot tabulation equipment that found “no issues” with how the votes were counted. That audit was conducted by two federally certified Voting System Testing Laboratories — Pro V&V and SLI Compliance.
“These tests looked for evidence of the tabulations system ability to connect to the internet and if the tabulators and/or system was transmitting information outside the closed air gapped system within the county tabulation center or while being delivered, returned, or used at a vote center,” the county reported. “Pro V&V and SLI Compliance found no evidence of internet connectivity.”
Nevertheless, election denier Senate President Karen Fann ordered the Arizona Senate’s own audit to be performed by former Republican Congressman John Shadegg.
Last week, Shaddeg’s audit produced the same finding we already knew in February 2021. Maricopa County’s vote-counting machines were not connected to internet, independent review finds:
Maricopa County’s vote-counting machines were not connected to the internet during the 2020 election, an independent review has found, further undercutting claims by former President Donald Trump and his allies that the results were “rigged.”
A trio of technology experts overseen by an impartial special master found no evidence of an internet connection, according to results of the review released Wednesday.
That echoes the county’s long-standing position as well as the findings of independent audits the county conducted a year ago. It also dispels unproven theories from election deniers that the tabulation machines were hooked up to the internet and therefore susceptible to hacking to throw the election to Joe Biden.
In a statement, Bill Gates, a Republican who chairs the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, said “the unanimous conclusions of this expert panel should be a final stake in the heart of the Senate’s so-called ‘audit.’
“Whenever impartial, independent and competent people have examined the county’s election practices, they have found no reason to doubt the integrity of those practices. The Board of Supervisors remains committed to free and fair elections that conform to federal and state laws.”
Senate President Karen Fann, a Prescott Republican who helped negotiate a settlement that allowed scrutiny of the county’s routers, said the findings overseen by special master John Shadegg should bring some closure to people who doubted the security of Maricopa County’s election machines.
“We’re hoping this new information will restore some confidence back into our elections system,” she said in a statement.
However, she noted that this is not the final chapter of the Senate’s scrutiny of the 2020 election.
Is it strange to anyone that the Senate got the results of the investigation @FannKfann ordered showing Maricopa County's ballot tabulation machines were secure and weren't connected to the internet, and the @AZSenateGOP hasn't said a word? No press release, no tweet, nothing.
— Jeremy Duda (@jeremyduda) March 25, 2022
Two of the Senate’s biggest skeptics [and MAGA/QAnon cult member election deniers] about the election said the router examination doesn’t qualm all their concerns.
“It just means Maricopa County’s IT system is not compromised,” said Sen. Sonny Borrelli, R-Lake Havasu City. While that’s a good thing, he said, he still has questions about the ability of the machines to be connected to the internet.
[The QAnon Queen] Sen. Kelly Townsend, R-Apache Junction, said she had not had a chance to review the report as of Wednesday evening and said she needed to see the examiners’ details.
“I approach this report with skepticism,” she said. Last September, she issued a list of six steps she felt the review should include to build confidence in their work. They included videotaping their work and signing statements under penalty of perjury that their work was accurate.
The QAnon Queen, Sen. Townsend, issued her own subpoena last week in spite of Shadegg’s report, continuing to pursue her unsupported and unhinged election denier conspiracy theories.
As chair of the Senate Government Committee, Townsend is holding yet another of her weekly election denier conspiracy theory clown shows in her committee later today. Looks like it is much ado about nothing but the lunatic ravings of this QAnon Queen abusing the power of her office, with the complicit support of election denier, Senate President Karen Fann.
Townsend said she issued the subpoena because she was tired of waiting for the AG to compel production of documents. The AG's letter to the county said it was their 3rd request for info. But the county says it was the 3rd request overall, not the 3rd request for the same info.
— Jeremy Duda (@jeremyduda) March 25, 2022
The county says the first request was a litigation hold letter, the second was a request for a bunch of info and documents, and the third was mostly for new materials, except for a few documents that were inadvertently omitted from the thousands of documents already provided.
— Jeremy Duda (@jeremyduda) March 25, 2022
Those few documents that were inadvertently omitted have now been submitted to the AG's Office, the county tells me. According to Townsend's subpoena, she's demanding the same documents so she can provide them to the AG.
— Jeremy Duda (@jeremyduda) March 25, 2022
If you were looking forward to hearing the Maricopa County supervisors at Monday’s Senate Government Committee hearing, you’re out of luck. @billgatesaz tells @AZKellyT that she can direct her questions to the board’s attorney, who will represent them at the hearing. pic.twitter.com/TWBBZKTmLt
— Jeremy Duda (@jeremyduda) March 26, 2022
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UPDATE: “GQP senator cancels hearing over Maricopa County subpoena”, https://www.azmirror.com/2022/03/28/gop-senator-cancels-hearing-over-maricopa-county-subpoena/
Stating that it’s unnecessary because the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors has complied with her recent subpoena, Chairwoman Kelly Townsend canceled a planned hearing of the Senate Government Committee, while the county said its compliance with the request had nothing to do with her.
Maricopa County says it was already complying with a request for records from the Attorney General’s Office, which had sought the same information as Townsend, and said the subpoena itself was completely unnecessary.
[I]nstead, Townsend declared victory on Monday, saying the supervisors had complied with her subpoena, which sought the same records that the Attorney General’s Office requested as part of its investigation into the so-called “audit” that Senate President Karen Fann ordered into the 2020 general election in Maricopa County.
“The Government Committee scheduled for later today is therefore no longer necessary, as its intended objective has been achieved,” Townsend said in a press statement.
Fields Moseley, a spokesman for Maricopa County, said Townsend’s subpoena had nothing to do with the county providing the materials to the Attorney General’s Office, and that county officials were already working on Wright’s request.
Greg Sargent writes, “Can we please stop pretending that Republicans echoing Donald Trump’s lies about 2020 are motivated by a genuine desire to crack down on voter fraud?”
“Stop pretending Trump and his supporters care about ‘voter fraud’”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/23/trump-adam-laxalt-voter-fraud-mo-brooks/
Two new developments should bury this absurdity once and for all: One involves a Republican candidate for Senate who is already preparing to contest a future election loss. The second involves Trump pulling an endorsement to punish insufficient devotion to his 2020 mythologizing.
Let’s start with Adam Laxalt, the leading GOP Senate candidate in Nevada. The New York Times has obtained audio of Laxalt declaring that he’s already assembling a legal team to combat inevitable election fraud in his race — 231 days before Election Day.
In a private meeting, Laxalt told attendees that Trump had failed to sufficiently fight 2020 fraud. Trump’s campaign was “late” to the fight, Laxalt said, vowing not to make that mistake himself.
“We’re vetting which group we think is going to do better,” Laxalt said, apparently referring to the team he’s putting together. Laxalt claimed things are “different” now than in 2020, in that there is far more awareness of “election fraud” than before.
Why is Laxalt doing this? The Times piece notes that the 2020 voting in Nevada was vetted to an extraordinary degree, but reports that Laxalt’s claims are “yet another indication of how vital the specter of voter fraud remains to the Republican base.”
Why should we grant this implicit presumption? Yes, many Republican voters might still “believe” extensive fraud occurred. But is this really why Laxalt is declaring his intention to combat an election loss in advance?
Laxalt has a revealing history. As NBC News reported, Laxalt worked hard to try to overturn Trump’s Nevada loss as a senior member of his campaign. Earlier this year, Laxalt was caught on tape raising doubts about voting in urban areas, while explicitly pronouncing voting in heavily Republican areas “legitimate.”
What Laxalt is doing should be clear: He’s suggesting future election losses should be subject to nullification by whatever means are necessary or available, regardless of whether “fraud” actually happened or can even be convincingly alleged. The feigned anticipation of “fraud” is simply the pretext for this declaration.
Which brings us to the other development. Trump just pulled his endorsement from Rep. Mo Brooks, a GOP candidate for Senate in Alabama, to punish Brooks for advising Republicans to put the 2020 election “behind you.”
Trump raged that Brooks no longer cares about 2020, describing it as “rife with fraud.” You’ll recall that Brooks was a major advocate for Trump’s effort to overturn that outcome. No matter: His devotion to the New Lost Cause wavered ever so slightly, and that was it.
It may be that Trump yanked his support because Brooks is losing his primary, and Trump doesn’t want his endorsement to appear powerless. Yet even so, there’s a dead giveaway in Trump’s statement about Brooks: It declares that in combating election fraud, “tremendous progress has been made that will help us in 2022 and 2024.”
What sort of “progress” is Trump talking about? Let’s suggest he’s referring to his efforts to install numerous loyalists in positions of future control over election administration. Notably, Laxalt says much the same thing, arguing that things are better now.
In short, both appear to be gearing up to contest future election losses in court and perhaps beyond no matter what, simply by virtue of them being losses, even in the full knowledge that they are in fact procedurally legitimate.
All this gets sanitized by the presumption that good-faith but misguided concerns about voter fraud are the primary motivation here. As historian Thomas Zimmer suggests, it’s more plausible that in some essential sense, the “Stop the Steal” movement, which continues today, is deeply animated by the idea that democracy itself renders fundamentally illegitimate outcomes when the other side, chosen by the “wrong” voters, wins power.
This bears directly on whether we will see real accountability for Trump’s effort to destroy our political order to remain in power illegitimately.
[It] allows them to lay the groundwork to try to pull off successful election subversion next time, while piously posing as innocents.
However unlikely such a scheme is to succeed, let’s at least call this out for what it is.