Bennett’s Bottom Line: No Evidence Supports Trump’s Lie That He Won AZ

Former AZSecState and AZ Senate President Ken Bennett, who is the Republican Trump supporter in the best position to know all the relevant evidence, does not believe the 2020 Arizona election was stolen or corrupted.

Ed.: This article is part of a series regarding Ken Bennett’s role and public statements about the #AZFraudit, please consider reading the others: “Ken Bennett’s ‘Concerns’ about Maricopa’s Administration of the 2020 Election Give Fuel to Conspiracies and Lies“; “Does Ken Bennett Support LookForwardArizona’s Aims and Methods?“; and “Some of Ken Bennett’s Suggestions for Improvements to AZ Election Audit Laws Are Sensible and Non-Partisan Reforms“

I attended the Look Ahead Arizona event in Tucson on 10/20/21 featuring Former AZ Secretary of State and former Senate President Ken Bennett, who has served as the ‘Senate Liaison’ to the Senate’s Cyber Ninja #AZFraudit propaganda operation for the better part of the past year.

I learned a thing or three that I think are certainly worth sharing in detail, and will do so in a series of posts over the coming days, but the bottom line is this: Ken Bennett, whom I believe to be an honorable man who has perhaps foolishly lent his credibility to an utterly dishonest effort to create doubt about the result of the 2020 Presidential election, does NOT believe there is ANY evidence that the 2020 election was stolen or corrupt.

Bennett is convinced that Biden won fairly, legally, and definitively, and he does NOT agree with Trump, Kari Lake, Mark Finchem, Andy Biggs, Paul Gosar and all the other conspiracy-mongering members of his party who are baselessly claiming the Trump was cheated out of victory in Arizona in an attempt to undermine our democracy.

I asked Bennett a short series of questions, this was the first and most important (other portions of the videos will appear in subsequent posts discussing various aspects and issues raised by those interactions in coming days: watch this space):

This is an AI-generated transcript (corrected by me where mistakes were made by the AI, thus any inaccuracies are my fault):

Bryan: Mike Bryan, I’m from here in Tucson. Hey, uh, so let me make sure that I understand your qualifications and I’m not overstating.

Bennett: My qualifications to be here at the town hall? or just in general?

Bryan: In General. So you were Secretary of State for eight years, is that right?

Bennett: Six years.

Bryan: So you ran the state’s elections for six years.

Bennett: I was the chief elections official per the constitution of the state. The Counties really run the elections…

Bryan: But you oversee the process.

Bennett: Yes, I oversaw 12 state elections or multi-jurisdictional elections during that six years.

Bryan: And for some number of years, you were also in the state Senate, and President of the state Senate. And you were present for the entire audit, well, pretty much the entire process of this Cyber Ninja audit/recount.

Bennett: Yeah, except for the week that they kicked me out.

Bryan: So you have a great deal, probably more than anybody, firsthand experience of what happened during the recount, what the results of the recount were, how the state’s elections are run, and how the state Senate works. Given that background and experience, do you agree with President Trump, Kari Lake and Mark Finchem, and others, who insist that the state of Arizona was stolen, and actually voted for Trump?

Bennett: Well, all we looked at in the audit was Maricopa county. And what we found in the audit in Maricopa county is that Trump didn’t lose by 45,000, approximately. He [Ed. i.e. Trump] lost by 45,300. That’s what the count of the physical ballots shows in Maricopa county. Now statewide. I think, um, the results from the 15 counties, there were four or five counties that Biden won, the others were won by Trump. Maricopa seems to the results, say Biden won by 45,000. He won by 10,000 statewide. So in the entire rest of the state, Trump won by 35,000, by 45,000 in Maricopa, Maricopa’s official results were that Biden won Maricopa county by 45,000. When we hand-counted the ballots, the Cyber Ninjas’ report says it was not 45,000, but 45,300. It changed by 300. That was, that was the result. Um, if you won the state, if you won Maricopa county by 45,000, but you only won the state by 10,000, then the other 14 counties combined, Trump won by 35,000. But I don’t think Trump won Pima county, probably not a lot of people can say what should have happened. But Biden won by 45 statewide it’s 10. So the rest of the counties were 35,000 for Trump. So, no, I don’t agree, with all due respect. I don’t agree with anyone who’s saying there is evidence that the election misrepresented the result. I’m a big Trump supporter. I would have loved to have been somebody to say that we found something different, but we didn’t win Maricopa county.

Editorial Note: I have uploaded the entire raw unedited videos I took that evening to our YouTube channel, so anyone can watch my entire set of videos of the event in chronological order and see that I’m not hiding anything or presenting any clips without context (I only stopped filming briefly to save the video periodically to ensure I didn’t run out of space on my phone): See Video 1, Video 2, Video 3, Video 4, Video 5, Video 6. YouTube can be slow to process large video files once uploaded, so if a video is still processing, please check back later. I wanted to publish this as soon as possible.

Game. Set. Match.

The election was not stolen, or corrupted, or inaccurate, according to the only man who is arguably best equipped by background, experience, and first-hand knowledge of the fraudulent audit, to know better than perhaps anyone else in the world that Trump definitively lost and none of this nonsense will ever change that fact.

Republicans, please STOP. You are only harming our democracy, undermining your own credibility, empowering the conspiracists and cranks in your ranks, and demoralizing and radicalizing your own supporters. Just. Stop.

UPDATE: The Washington Post has an excellent point by point rebuttal of Trump’s lies about the Arizona election and the #AZFraudit that should be required reading. I strongly suggest everyone read it, especially Republicans who have to kill the cancer of disinformation eating their party.