Fitz: The Cyber Ninja Saga, Chapter 2

Crossposted with permission from David Fitzsimmons’ excellent SubStack ‘Arizona’s Progressive Voice’. Why aren’t you paying subscriber, already?

In 2010, a decade before the “Cyber Ninja” circus in Arizona, young and handsome Doug Logan was one of the top scorers in a cybersecurity talent contest sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security. Quite a noteworthy feat for the wholesome guy described by chums as a straight arrow.

It wouldn’t be long before Logan, the Christian computer nerd with a winning smile, would own his own modest cyber security firm. In the era when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were still hot icons for nostalgic nerds Logan dubbed his fledgling enterprise “Cyber Ninjas”, handing out business cards featuring a cartoon image of a ninja assassin warrior leaping off the card with a flying cyber kick right into the hard drive of any bad guy daring to breach the computer systems of Logan’s clients. Hiyah!.

When Logan, now the CEO of “Cyber Ninjas”, was summoned to Tomotley plantation in December of 2020, he was greeted by Trump’s extra-legal covert operatives, Powell, Byrne, and Flynn, the three MAGA musketeers who eventually called themselves the “Bad News Bears”. Named for a team of misfits in a wholesome Disney comedy, they far exceeded the dark mission and sinister reach of President Nixon’s extra-legal covert tricksters who broke into the Watergate complex in the seventies known as the “Plumbers”.

Logan became known in texts among the “Bad News Bears” as “Doug Patriot”.

“Doug Patriot” began researching voting fraud rumors at Tomotley in early December and his dogged research would provide Powell, Byrne, and Flynn with enough cyber smoke to file subpoenas so they could get their bear paws on voting machines across the country. 

By late December, thanks to “Doug Patriot’s” efforts, the “Bad News Bears” had good news for the twice-impeached pussy-grabbing loser of the 2020 election: a far-reaching strategy to reverse engineer the nation’s election results, a plot which the deplorable minions shared with their despicable mobster in an oval office meeting.

Step one. Declare there’s enough suspicion of voter fraud in six states to send in the U.S. National Guard to seize the voting machines.

Step two. Recount the votes on live-streamed TV.

Step three. “Stop the steal” by stealing back re-election. Hang onto power like any common banana republic generalissimo mistaken for a messiah and make America great again.

At the same time, “Patriot Doug”, who in the new year would market himself to the Arizona Senate as a non-partisan player, began tweeting and using the #stopthesteal hashtag.

Trump’s advisers, making the international spinning finger next to the temple gesture for “looney toons” after the “Bad News Bears” left the Oval Office, advised him to dismiss their “whacky”anti-democratic ideas.

The biggest “Bears”, Byrne, Flynn and Powell, ignored this brush off and persisted in generating more smoke-based subpoenas with the help of bear cub “Doug Patriot”. And thanks to MAGA-mesmerized partisan election clerks, the “Bad News Bears” were able to get their grasping bear claws on the voting machines in several states.

And then, after rifling through these machines like hungry bears rummaging through cabins they finally sniffed out a puff of voter fraud-scented smoke in Antrim County, Michigan.

According to reporting in the Arizona Republic a “cooperative 75-year-old lady working in a voting precinct” offered the “Bears” her rumor-based suspicions along with Antrim County’s election audit logs. The Bears presented this piffle to a local judge who granted “Patriot Doug”, who had no election experience, access to these voting machines in Michigan.

The resulting smoke was all Trump needed to ignore his advisors and bellow the Big Lie that he had won and the election was stolen.

One December tweet from “Patriot Doug” noted, “The parallels between the statistical analysis of Venezuela and this year’s election are astonishing. I’m ashamed about how few republicans are talking about it.”

Another Logan tweet featured a Wheel of Fortune meme with the conviction “Joe Biden committed election fraud.”

And tweet from Logan reposted an 8chan Q-Anon basement troll who claimed an audit would prove 200,000 votes had been stolen from Trump in Arizona.

Meanwhile, in Arizona, MAGA Republican Party Chairwoman Kelli “Chemtrails are real” Ward, a lickspittle who would become a fake elector for Trump, reinforced these crackpot claims online and in person.

Ward also peddled a trope spread by the “Bad News Bears” questioning the role of Dominion Voting Systems, the vendor that provided Maricopa County with its 2020 ballot tabulation machines.

Slandering the company with rumors that would win enough defamation suits to bankrupt a number of Trump supporters was a typical smooth move for Ward, the leader of Arizona’s new devolved Republican Party which had driven out the heretical McCain and Goldwater Republicans and had become a seething cabal of Christian nationalist nitwits, terrifying white supremacists, thuggish insurrectionists and treasonous tumbleweeds in tin-foil hats. 

On the 6th of January a mob of Trump supporters, brain-dead brown shirts in plaid, believing the election was stolen, and encouraged by the coup plotting loser of that election, marched towards the Capitol.

Inside the United States House of Representatives Arizona lawmaker, Paul Gosar, a nattering neo-Nazi apologist, along with another Arizona lawmaker, Andy Biggs, a rabid, vapid gasbag for Trump, were both calling for their colleagues to set aside the electors the voters of their state had selected.

At that moment of disgraceful disregard for the voters of Arizona, Trump’s violent mob of malcontents and malevolent morons stormed the steps of Congress, smashed windows, broke into the Capitol, vandalized our seat of democracy, interrupted our Republic’s sacred rite of democratic renewal, and attempted to lynch the officiating officer, the Vice-president of the United States.

Several Arizona Republicans were in that mob. Many were friends of Gosar and Biggs. A majority were Christian nationalist zealots. A troubling number of those boobs and barbarians were Arizona lawmakers, insurrectionists who would return to Arizona to serve in our state legislature, or worse, to run for seats in the Congress they had stormed on behalf of their twice-impeached fascist grifter.  Every one of the marauders believed the Big Lie that Doug Logan, “Patriot Doug” the straight arrow, the honest and fine young Christian father of eleven, had helped to bring to life back at Tomalley plantation like Frankenstein’s monster among the Spanish moss. This spectacular seditious rebellion, carried out by cynical scurrilous rubes and gullible scoundrels, resulted in the deaths of seven Americans.

Let’s review the list of Arizona’s traitors to the Constitution of our Untied States.

Top of the list was a Christian nationalist crackpot from Kalamazoo named Mark Finchem, an infamous fool and Bannon tool, who loved to dress up like a real live rootin’ tootin’ howdy doody cowboy. Elected to the Arizona House to represent the FOX news fanatics and near dead nitwits who populated the retirement communities in northwest Tucson, the cowpoke with enough conspiracy theories under his store bought Stetson to fill Roy Rogers’ corral, was in Washington on that day hoping to present his super special book of super special evidence of fraud full of horse shit to Pence who, unfortunately for Arizona Slim, was at the time heading out of Dodge,  fleeing a lynch mob. Seeing the pitchforks, bear spray and mayhem Finchem skedaddled back to the ranch.

Finchem would return west to run for Secretary of State in Arizona in hopes he could insure Trump’s reelection in 2024. He got his biscuits kicked by Adrian Fontes.

Another Arizonan keen on rebellion was Anthony Kern, an Arizona lawmaker who had lost reelection to his state seat. Kern, a MAGA patriot, was there at the Capitol just in case a fake elector was needed. That is, if the real electors the people of Arizona had sent to Washington had been usurped by Trump’s mob of traitors. Kern, the fake elector, won election to a state Senate seat in 2022, because his constituents can’t read and Kern, the fake elector, has since announced his candidacy for Congress, without citing his impressive experience as a fake elector in the sights of Arizona’s Democratic Attorney General.

Tucson siblings Felicia and Cory Konold were there with the mob.  So were two

Marine vets from the Grand Canyon State, Micajah Joel Jackson and James McGrew, who proved Marines are not always faithful to the Constitution that they swore oaths to defend.

And Jacob Zerkle from Bowie, Arizona showed up at the Capitol while Arizona’s Eddie Vallejo showed up at a local D.C. hotel where he stood by for orders, itching to give them election stealers what fer.

The standout pride of Arizona had to be Jake Angeli, the Christian nationalist Q-Anon Shaman in a buffalo headdress. The one with horns. The shirtless clown wearing face paint. You see Jake had seen a vision. Jake believed he was part of a super army of super spiritual super soldiers.

Today he’s served his time for his anti-democratic crime and now he’s running for Congress in Arizona. Without face paint. Or his buffalo head dress. Because what baby wants to be kissed on the campaign trail by a convicted insurrectionist with horns?

From sunbaked Phoenix, Arizona came Anthime Gionet, a half-baked insurrectionist known as “Baked Alaska”, a far-right white supremacist social media prankster who marched in Charlottesville’s “Unite the Right rally” chanting “You will note replace us”.

Those characteristics look great on any resume, right?

Add Arizona’s Jeff Zink to the seditious stink. These days Zink’s back from his treasonous field trip running for Congress in a south Phoenix district.

Arizona’s Klete Keller was there, too. Keller was a two-time gold medal-winning Olympic swimmer who won the Silver for Sorry and the Bronze for Contrition.

Cottonwood’s Nathan Entrekin, travelled all the way there because he felt called by Trump himself. It’s not clear if Trump called on Nate to wear his gladiator costume which looked cool in the mirror at the hotel earlier that day to the earnest young Mormon lad. If any of the insurrectionists had asked, Nate would have told them he was playing “Captain Moroni” a really cool character from the totally bitchin’ “Book of Mormon” a work of poorly written fantasy fiction that Mark Twain once described with one word. “Chloroform.” I suspect Mark Twain would have been at a loss to describe Nate, a momma’s boy who should have read his fave book closer. If he had he’ would have known that “Moroni” led a charge against a mob trying to overthrow a leader chosen by the people and replace him with an all-powerful king. But hey, Spartacus, your costume was super cool.

Ray Epps, an Oath Keeper from Queen Creek, Arizona was there. Poor bastard was slandered by Fox, accused of being a “Deep State” plant. Another life mangled by the Murdoch lie factory for ratings. He moved. Don’t tell anyone.

Despite the lie-fueled insurrection, Joe Biden, a relatively conventional guy in a tie from Scranton who believes in democracy, by contrast, was inaugurated President of the United States and in spite of the deaths and arrests and convictions “Patriot Doug” would continue to do his part perpetuating the Big Lie in the days ahead.

Back in Arizona, Trump’s belligerent, bellicose base of bullies and true believers harassed state officials as right-wing Pastors and right-wing online media, funded, and subsidized by batshit crazy billionaires, demanded a recount in Maricopa County.

Meanwhile Trump’s batty “Bad News Bears” weren’t having any success with their demonstrably groundless and frivolous lawsuits in courtroom after courtroom where facts mattered.

So they changed tactics.

They’d try a tactic where facts didn’t matter political theater. They’d orchestrate “vote audits” to raise the kind of suspicions and doubt that would give Republican lawmakers in their respective states the political cover to decertify the 2020 election results, swing state by swing state. Trumpers would occupy state houses, call in bomb threats, threaten County Recorders, show up at their homes armed and even plot to kidnap a Governor.

Trump’s deluded, duped and deranged followers, waving their pitchforks, their placards, their combat weapons and their confederate flags in Phoenix were scaring the bejeezus out of everyone, especially the old school Republican officials who still respected the law and played by the rules.

The President of the Arizona Senate, a MAGA Republican dolt from Prescott named Karen Fann, and her fellow dolt, Warren Peterson, the Majority Leader in the Arizona House of Representatives, settled on an audit to answer the rage on the street.

State Senator Fann’s contacts in the online world of crazy town had told her about Logan and his “Cyber Ninjas” and the “audits” they conducted in Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania. What no one told her was that Logan, the ringmaster, had no election experience.

After the insurrection, Mike Flynn, would take his “ReAwaken America” sideshow across America, building a private army for God, church by church, hall by hall, enlisting Christian citizen soldiers who believed they were at war with those who hated them because they loved Jesus. General Flynn’s band of Bible belters would take a bullet for Jesus and believe anything their savior sent by God to Mar-a-Lago would tell them.

And in February the non-partisan patriot Doug Logan, #stopthesteal, would take a meeting in Arizona.

David Fitsimmons