The AZ Senate’s GQP Sham ‘Fraudit’ Is Fodder For QAnon Grifter Propaganda

The Arizona Mirror reports on The conspiracy theory film made at the Arizona audit:

A filmmaker known for a film that claims 9/11 was an alien conspiracy is directing a documentary promoting baseless election fraud claims — a movie that features people working for the Arizona Senate’s sham “fraudit,” that was filmed at the sham “fraudit” site and is based on a book written by a man who is raising money grifting from Trump supporters to fund the audit.

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Former Overstock.com CEO and Trump ally Patrick Byrne is the main star in a film called “The Deep Rig,” which is based off a book Byrne wrote. Byrne is the founder of a Florida-based 501(c)(4) that is aiming to raise $2.8 million to fund the Arizona audit.

“I want you to know, it’s not over and we have not lost,” failed inventor and treasure hunter Jovan Pulitzer says. The audit is currently using his unproven technology to look for “counterfeit” ballots.

Pulitzer, who does not have a background in election work, has claimed his technology can tell if a human or machine marked the ballot, as well as if a ballot is made of the right type of paper.

Pulitzer’s most well known invention is the CueCat, a barcode reader which placed number five in Time Magazine’s worst inventions of all time just under Agent Orange and beating out subprime mortgages.

The invention was popular among hackers due to the ease at which they were able to hackthe device and use it for whatever purpose they needed. However, CueCat would also later be the subject of a data breach in which 140,000 CueCat users had their personal information exposed. Doh!

Bennett told the Arizona Mirror he did not know if any other members of the audit team were interviewed for the film.

Why am I hearing this classic Buck Owen’s song in my head? Enjoy Ken “Birther” Bennett (I haven’t forgotten your racist conspiracy mongering).

Marketing for the film indicates that the filmmakers have special access to the auditors and their findings.

“Follow the team of lawyers & ‘cyber ninjas,’ determined to reveal the facts behind the headlines, to backroom scenes and through electronic networks designed to rig any election they conduct,” a Telegram account linked to the film says.

The Senate hired a Florida-based company, Cyber Ninjas, to lead the auditing team. The company has no background in election administration or auditing, but CEO Doug Logan spread false claims of election fraud and worked to overturn the 2020 election after Donald Trump lost.

Byrne has been a leading voice in 2020 election fraud claims and has railed against the so-called “deep state”. Some of his claims came after it was revealed he had an affair with accused Russian spy Maria Butina, which he claimed the FBI encouraged him to do.

Yeah, riiight. Still working for the Russkies I see.

Byrne was also present at an hour-long meeting at the White House during the final days of Donald Trump’s presidency in which he, Sidney Powell and disgraced retired Gen. Michael Flynn urged the president to overturn the election [in a coup d’etat]. Flynn, who recently said at a QAnon convention that a coup should happen in the United States, also appears in the film. [But of course he does.]

Bennett and others who control the official Twitter account for the Arizona audit have promoted the Fund The Audit effort. According to reporting by the Washington Post, Bennett was told to promote the fund by Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan.

The director, Roger R. Richards, has made a number of highly conspiratorial films featuring QAnon-related claims around the “Deep State” as well as the end of the world, as predicted by aliens and the CIA.

The trailer also includes Phil Waldron of Allied Security Operations Group, who was almost hired by the Arizona Senate to conduct the audit and testified as an expert for the Trump campaign during an unofficial election integrity hearing in Phoenix.

Waldron’s company created a report that falsely claimed that the Antrim County, Mich. machines had a 68% error rate, an allegation that Trump repeated on Twitter. Michigan election officials and Dominion have taken issue with other claims from the report, which asserted that Antrim County’s election equipment “is intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results.”

Allied Security Operations Group and Waldron have been widely criticized by election and security officials and have also been known for inaccurate and false claims.

The trailer also includes interviews with a number of unnamed people who have their faces obscured and their voices changed.

The Arizona audit has become a hotbed of conspiracy theorists and conspiracy theories with some prominent proponents, such as Oro Valley Republican Mark Finchem, appearing on QAnon talk shows to talk about it.

What is taking the Department of Justice so long to shut down this shitshow of fraud that is in clear violation of federal election laws?





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1 thought on “The AZ Senate’s GQP Sham ‘Fraudit’ Is Fodder For QAnon Grifter Propaganda”

  1. Phillip Bump from the Washington Post explains that former crackhead (are we sure?) Mike Lindell, the My Pillow QAnon/insurrection coconspirator and Big Lie propagandist is even more ridiculous than you have imagined. “Mike Lindell’s ‘fraud’ allegations are even more ridiculous than you might think”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/04/mike-lindells-fraud-allegations-are-even-more-ridiculous-than-you-might-think/

    Lindell’s wealth has made him a particularly loud voice among those clamoring about the election. He has the resources to hire various dubious “investigators” and to produce shakily constructed videos detailing what they’ve found. He also has the resources to respond to a 10-figure defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, not by acquiescing to having spread unverifiable claims but, instead, with a countersuit of his own in which he repeats and elevates those claims.

    That countersuit, filed this week, is the written version of Lindell’s “documentaries,” melodramatic, glitchy, sweeping and deeply flawed in both obvious and non-obvious ways.

    [T]his claim — that Lindell can prove or has proved that fraud occurred — is meant to bolster his public assertions about the company.

    [T]he catch here is that Lindell offers very little that’s actually intended to serve as direct evidence of malfeasance. There is a lot of hand-waving about questions that had been raised about Dominion’s machines and lots of ad hominem assertions about the company and its employees, but the suit introduces very little that might be considered actual, direct evidence that votes were manipulated.

    Instead, there’s a lot of circumstantial stuff — like that Dominion wouldn’t turn over proprietary passwords to the team in Arizona that’s working on behalf of the Republican majority in the state Senate — to gin up questions about the election results. This was addressed in a scathing letter from county officials in Arizona explaining that the problem is the “auditors” chosen by the senators lacked the necessary credentials to do the research they wanted to do. The existence of that effort is itself presented by Lindell as evidence that something untoward happened, which is a bit like spending $250,000 on Bigfoot deterrents and then pointing to that investment as evidence that Bigfoot must exist.

    Lots of analysis, cut to the conclusion:

    In other words, one assumes that Dominion’s lawyers aren’t that worried about this lawsuit. Particularly after Barnes and Thornburg partner out after signing on as counsel in MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell election fraud lawsuit. The Big Law firm says ex-partner was not authorized to put the firm’s name on the filing.

    • Prediction: Dominion Voting Systems is about to become the new owner of My Pillow, and Mike Lindell can go back to being a crackhead.

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