Senate President Karen Fann continues the exercise in embarrassment that has become her legacy.
Laurie Roberts of The Republic writes, ‘Uncertify the election’? The embarrassment of Senate President Karen Fann is now complete:
The Prescott Republican recently told a reporter for The Undercurrent, a progressive political website, that Attorney General Mark Brnovich will have to go to court to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election if he concludes the audit was correct.
Say what?
? Watching @FannKfann say here that the AZ audit findings, if verified by the AG, should be used to decertify the election, I have some … thoughts.
Mainly: Senate Republicans misled the court on the audit's purpose just to get subpoenas approved …https://t.co/56SBfHPjTT
— Jen Fifield (@JenAFifield) April 28, 2022
The county argued there was no legislative purpose.
The Senate said there was, with lawyers saying the purpose was for lawmakers to examine Arizona elections in order to come up with proposals for laws to improve them. pic.twitter.com/XhulJvXKpd
— Jen Fifield (@JenAFifield) April 28, 2022
If the Senate's lawyers had told the judge that the purpose of the audit was to find fraud that could be used to decertify the election, how would that have changed the outcome of the case?
— Jen Fifield (@JenAFifield) April 28, 2022
It was apparent to everyone but the judge that the Senate was using the "legislative purpose" as a fig leaf to embark on a conspiracy-fueled fishing expedition.
Imagine also if the court knew that Team Trump was the driving force behind the subpoenas, which we now know. https://t.co/yO5RimDP4P
— Jim Small (@JimSmall) April 29, 2022
This is, no doubt, news to her ninja auditors, who despite months of looking found no evidence of fraud in the election.
It’s likely news to Brnovich who since her comments has issued an interim reportthat that found “serious vulnerabilities” in Arizona’s election system but no actual fraud.
Beyond the nine cases – out of 3.4 million votes – that he already was prosecuting, that is.
‘The election is uncertifiable,’ Fann said
Yet there was Fann at a March “election integrity” conference, embracing the crazy and fanning the flames of an imagined conspiracy.
“I believe that as long as he (Brnovich) verifies our information it has to go to court because it’s not now just about was it fraudulent or not,” she told The Undercurrent’s Lauren Windsor. “It’s the fact that he now verified that all of our information we gave him is correct and therefore the election is uncertifiable because we don’t know who won and we need to have a new election.”
.@FannKfann says @GeneralBrnovich needs to go to court to challenge the 2020 election if he certifies the results of her "audit."
The findings completely crumbled under scrutiny, and audit head Doug Logan still refuses to speak to reporters who will ask him tough questions. https://t.co/sPWPHOSy21
— Jeremy Duda (@jeremyduda) April 28, 2022
Just as a note, @GeneralBrnovich letter did not verify any of the senate's findings.
— The AZ – abc15 – Data Guru (@Garrett_Archer) April 28, 2022
It should also be noted that, in addition to Doug Logan, Fann has consistently refused to answer questions about some of the glaring problems with the audit's findings.
— Jeremy Duda (@jeremyduda) April 28, 2022
We don’t know who won, Sen. Fann?
The ninjas’ own hand count of paper ballots found that Biden won the election – a point that, once upon a time, Fann acknowledged.
But that was long, long ago, when the president of the Arizona Senate dealt in facts, not phony conspiracy theories.
Manipulated by Trump? Or one of them all along?
It’s bad enough that this once-respected conservative shredded her reputation by hiring an inexperienced Trump groupie to conduct what she had the nerve to call an “unbiased” audit of Maricopa County’s election. (If you want to know what a leader looks like, see her House counterpart, Speaker Rusty Bowers, who just said no to Trump and his conspiracy crew.)
Bad enough that Fann doesn’t seem to know that there is no legal mechanism to undo an election that already has been duly certified according to the laws of the land.
Also, this cannot be said enough – there is no such thing as decertifying an already concluded presidential election. It's not a real thing. The 2020 election can't be decertified and it can't be re-done. It's over.
— Jeremy Duda (@jeremyduda) April 28, 2022
Bad enough that she doesn’t even seem to realize her own audit found no evidence of fraud.
Now I’ve got to wonder if she’s just being manipulated by Trump and the Senate’s conspiracy crew or if she was one of them all along. [Oh, it’s the latter.]
This is one of the state’s highest ranking Republican leaders, a seasoned politician who has repeatedly insisted that the purpose of her election audit was not to overturn Trump’s loss but to find weaknesses in Arizona’s election system and fix them to “restore” voter confidence.
Fann long claimed this was about restoring trust
“It was never about overturning the election, it was about the integrity of the Arizona election system,” she told then-Arizona Republic reporter Jen Fifield. “If people have questions, they deserve answers.”
Here is Fann in May, writing to a constituent who had concerns about the audit:
“This absolutely has nothing to do with Trump,” she wrote. “The election cannot be overturned. This audit is ONLY about election integrity, answering their questions, and hopefully proving there was nothing wrong with the election.”
Here is Fann in July, during a meeting to get an update on the audit:
“The important thing that we wanted to make sure that everybody knew, which we told you, as well, at the beginning, is this is not about Trump,” she said. “This is not about overturning the election. This has never been about anything other than election integrity.”
Now, suddenly it’s about Trump and overturning the election?
Will a judge haul her into court to explain?
It’s one thing to mislead the citizens of Arizona, but it would appear Fann also misled a judge.
After viewing Fann’s comments to The Undercurrent, VoteBeatUSA’s Jenn Fifield pointed out that Fann in February 2021 assured a judge that her subpoena for all election records was issued for a “valid legislative purpose.”
Studying the results of an election in order to formulate legislation to shore up any weakenesses in election law? Valid legislative purpose.
Demanding that the county turn over our ballots, voters’ personal information and all of the county’s tabulation machinery because certain Republican senators don’t like the results of the election? Possibly not so valid.
If I was Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Timothy Thomason, I would not be amused. In fact, I’d haul Fann into court for an explanation about why he was misled about the purpose of her subpoena.
Who knows. Maybe she can claim temporary insanity.
I’d certainly believe it.
Note: All 16 Republican Senators voted in favor of the subpoena to pursue their sham “fraudit.” Are they all insane, or were they all part of Trump’s Coup Plot, and co-conspirators in his seditious conspiracy and coup d’etat in which challenging the state’s election results was a critical component of his Coup Plot? This is the reality.
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