The Never-Ending Fiasco Of The AZ Senate’s GQP Sham ‘Fraudit’

Update to AZ Court Of Appeals Orders Arizona Senate To Produce Cyber Ninjas GQP ‘Fraudit’ Documents ‘Immediately’.

The Cyber Ninja, QAnon conspiracy theorist Doug Logan, finally sat down for his deposition last week, but failed to be a cooperative witness in defiance of the court’s order to produce documents. Further sanctions are warranted. Cyber Ninjas CEO participates in contentious deposition, says he’s not ready to turn over audit records:

Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan says he will not turn over records from the review of Maricopa County’s 2020 election until he has a “clear” ruling he can appeal to the highest court.

There is already a clear ruling, see the earlier post. He is in contempt of court.

Logan answered questions during a contentious deposition with attorneys for The Arizona Republic and American Oversight. The news organization and the left-leaning nonprofit have battled in court for months for the release of texts, emails and other documents related to the ballot recount and related investigations of the 2020 election ordered by Republicans in the Arizona Senate.

“He started off very complacent and happy to answer questions, but as it went on he became more combative,” said Craig Hoffman, The Republic’s attorney, who questioned Logan during the more than four-hour deposition. “He was clearly frustrated by the end of it.”

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge John Hannah on Jan. 6 found Cyber Ninjas in contempt of an order to turn over the records and imposed a $50,000 a day fine against the company for not producing the records.

Since then, The Republic’s lawsuit was consolidated with American Oversight’s,which is why the lawyers for both parties got to question Logan on Thursday.

Logan said Hannah’s November order to the company to turn over records was the result of a “biased judge,” according to Hoffman.

Let him cool his heels in a jail cell for contempt of court until he produces the documents and apologizes to the judge.

Logan went on “long soliloquies” during the deposition on how he did not believe his company was obligated to turn over records because they should not be public, Hoffman said.

Already litigated, and you lost, putz.

Some of Logan’s comments during the deposition echoed those of his [unethical] lawyer, Jack Wilenchik, from the combative Jan. 6 court hearing, where Wilenchik disputed that Hannah had given a clear order to turn over the documents in the company’s possession.

During that hearing, Wilenchik frequently asserted that Hannah had not issued a clear order, to which Hannah responded that the lawyer was “trolling” him and at risk of being held in direct contempt.

Let him cool his heels in a jail cell for contempt of court too, next to his client.

Wilenchik continues to represent Logan in the matter, even though Wilenchik tried unsuccessfully to be removed from the case, telling the court Logan hasn’t been paying him.

Logan assured the attorneys during the deposition that the documents were secure, according to Hoffman.

Logan testified that he did the lion’s share of work on the audit himself, with limited help from one Cyber Ninjas employee and one or two contract employees. Now, the company has shut its doors, Logan is liquidating assets and he is unclear why the Arizona Senate hasn’t paid Cyber Ninjas the remaining $100,000 owed under his contract, Hoffman said.

Logan said he has never received a direct explanation on that but has seen some suggested explanations “in the media.”

Logan’s lawyer has said he is the “former” CEO of Cyber Ninjas, but a document his lawyers sent the Senate this week still describes him as president of the board of the company.

Logan testified that money coming in from the sale of Cyber Ninjas’ assets has been used to pay its subcontractors, not set aside for paying for a review of its audit-related documents.

Cyber Ninjas’ emails and Microsoft Teams messages are backed up on a server, and Logan said he is committed to pay to maintain that server even as Cyber Ninjas winds down, Hoffman said.

Logan has used one phone since the audit began and it is regularly backed up, and Logan said he deletes no text messages, Hoffman said.

Logan testified all of the audit-related records are either on that server, in backed-up text messages, or in a storage facility in Arizona that is locked and under video surveillance, Hoffman said.

Hoffman said Logan testified that:

• • • Images of the Dominion Voting Systems machines were taken to Montana for review with Logan’s permission by Ben Cotton, CEO of the audit subcontractor CyFIR.  Logan said he did not know if what was taken to Montana included the firmware for the machines. Questions about the ultimate disposition of that material would have to be posed to Cotton, Logan said.
    • Logan currently controls the actions of Cyber Ninjas as president of its board, and he and his wife have been the sole shareholders since September.
    • Cyber Ninjas is liquidating its assets, but audit-related records will be saved from those assets. One or two laptops have been transferred to an entity that Logan started called “Akolytos,”  which does the same sort of work that Cyber Ninjas formerly did.
    • It is undecided whether Cyber Ninjas will declare bankruptcy.
    • Cyber Ninjas passed along document preservation requests received from the Senate to its audit subcontractors in September and January. Logan said he told those companies they had to figure out their own obligations related to preservation. Those companies include StratTech Solutions in Scottsdale; WakeTSI in West Chester, Pennsylvania; and CyFIR in Ashburn, Virginia.

Dispute over judge’s rulings

In his deposition, Logan contended the company had a right to a “clear” ruling subject to appeal before turning over any documents. He said he would appeal to the Supreme Court.

Hoffman said he assumed Logan meant the Arizona Supreme Court. It’s the highest court where most decisions on state law can be appealed. [Don’t assume this idiot knows that.]

Cyber Ninjas months ago had turned over some records to the Senate, but Logan said the many documents still in the company’s possession would have to be reviewed for privileged information before release, and Cyber Ninjas had no assets to pay for such a review.

Logan also was concerned that names of people who volunteered for the election recount could be made public and those people could be “doxxed,” and he also said some of the information Cyber Ninjas collected should not be made public, such as images of Dominion voting machines.

This information is being produced to the lawyers for The Arizona Republic and American Oversight for purposes of this litigation. This information is not going to be made public.

[And] images of Dominion voting machines are beyond the scope of the public records requests from The Republic to the Senate and Cyber Ninjas.

This clown is full of bullshit excuses for defying the court’s order.

Logan said it could take a significant amount of time to review the documents to determine what should be released as part of the lawsuit, Hoffman said.

He has already had a significant amount of time to conduct this review. This is just more dilatory delay.

Logan testified he used revenue from Cyber Ninjas to pay for expenses during the election review, despite raising millions of dollars in donations for the effort, and that the company lost $200,000 on the project.

His company said in a previous letter to the attorney for the Arizona Senate that the election review cost about $2 million more than it brought in from donations and that subcontractors still were owed another $1.9 million.

Logan failed to appear at a scheduled Jan. 5 deposition with lawyers for American Oversight. The Republic got to participate in the proceeding since the cases were consolidated. Cyber Ninjas and Logan also were fined $1,000 for missing the first deposition.

UPDATE: AZ Law blog reports, NEW: State Senate/Cyber Ninjas Get Temporary Reprieve On Orders To Turn Over Election “Audit” Records –AZ Supreme Ct.: Arizona’s State Senate and their Cyber Ninjas received a temporary reprieve on the latest order to turn over public records regarding the election “audit”. Arizona Supreme Court Justice John Lopez IV put the “temporary stay” until the parties can respond to the Senate’s Motion and Petition for Review and until the Court can conference on the matter on February 15.

After this Cyber Ninjas/Arizona Senate Republicans’ sham “fraudit” fiasco, we are going to be subjected to another round of this Big Lie conspiracy theory and the collective insanity of Republicans.

The Arizona Mirror reports, Special master chooses experts for ‘audit’ examination of routers and logs:

The special master who is overseeing the examination of Maricopa County’s routers as part of the so-called “audit” of the 2020 election has selected his team of experts, and the Senate has provided him with a list of questions it wants answered.

The end goal of the examination is to see whether Maricopa County’s election equipment was ever connected to the internet [we already know that it was not], as proponents of conspiracy theories about the 2020 election have insisted. The county has repeatedly denied the allegations, and audits it conducted of its election equipment confirmed as much in early 2021.

Some proponents of the false allegations that the 2020 election was rigged against former President Donald Trump have espoused wild theories that election systems in Arizona and other swing states that President Joe Biden won were hacked so that votes could be changed. Senate President Karen Fann and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Warren Petersen subpoenaed the routers and Splunk logs as part of their “audit,” despite a lack of evidence that the county’s ballot tabulation machines or other parts of its election system were ever connected to the internet.

Two pieces of equipment that the Senate’s “audit” team said were connected to the internet were election department web servers that are supposed to be connected, and which aren’t connected to the election management system, the county said.

John Shadegg, a former Republican congressman whom the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and Fann chose as the special master in September, announced his three-person team on Friday.

Shadegg’s team consists of Jane Ginn, a cybersecurity threat analyst from Cyber Threat Intelligence Network, Inc.; Brad Rhodes, an independent cybersecurity consultant and adjunct professor at Gannon University in Erie, Penn.; and Andrew Keck, the owner and chief technology officer at Profile Imaging of Columbus, LLC. Under the terms of his agreement with the county, Shadegg had sole discretion to select the team, though Fann said in a press statement that all parties had agreed on the IT experts.

Shadegg is being paid $500 an hour for serving as special master [grossly overpaid.]. The Arizona Republic reported Friday that he has been paid nearly $17,000 so far. Each of the experts will bill the county for their time, and it’s unclear how much it will cost to examine the routers and the logs.

The three experts will answer the list of questions submitted by the Senate pertaining to the county’s routers and logs created by the software Splunk, which creates records of events and tasks that occur over a network in order to monitor security, troubleshoot issues or detect threats.

“Having been instructed not to release the questions prior to the IT experts being hired, the Senate is now submitting the list of questions provided by the auditors. We are hoping to conclude this part of the audit expeditiously and without any further delays,” Fann said in a press statement.

The Arizona Mirror spoke with two people with knowledge of Splunk and network security about the questions posed by the Senate to gain a better understanding of what information the Senate is asking for and the feasibility of its demands.

“A lot of the information they’re asking for is information that wouldn’t be logged,” Bryan Andrews, a network engineer, told the Mirror. He added that the Senate is asking for “good diagnostic information,” but it wouldn’t likely have a “smoking gun.”

This is similar to what a tech expert I spoke to told me, that a bunch of these commands will contain recent info but zero info from 2020. They’re completely irrelevant to the election. https://t.co/eG0JEHt3VJ

— Jeremy Duda (@jeremyduda) January 29, 2022

Many of the logs the Senate would likely receive will be encrypted, as well, meaning they will be impossible to interpret and the Senate will only be able to see that a request happened and no other information. Additionally, Splunk does not log information such as IP or netflow data.

“They want to pretend that there was a wiretap and that they can pull all the records,” Andrews said.

The logs will only show certain information, such as failed log-in attempts, communications between servers or if a cable is unplugged. It won’t show if a hacker or nefarious state actor tried to hack the county’s system, Andrews said.

Andrews also said that it is possible that other county information could be contained among the logs, as generally Splunk is all contained in one account that is shared across one system which is then split into different “silos” so you “have to be very careful when giving someone access,” Andrews said.

One cybersecurity expert said there will be reams of data to sift through, and that it will be easy to cherry-pick data and present it as evidence of something that can’t be proven.

“It’s going to generate a ton of data — just as if you were going to record somebody’s conversations for a week,” Jason Hernandez, an independent security researcher, said. “There would absolutely be something that would be taken out of context and make somebody look bad.”

[C]ounty officials turned over most of the materials that Fann and Petersen sought after a judge ruled that the subpoenas were valid. But the county balked at providing access to the routers, which service all county departments, and which contain information that goes far beyond the 2020 election. The agreement they reached in September keeps the routers in the county’s possession and out of the audit team’s hands, and protects the confidential information.

“I’m encouraged to hear that Special Master Shadegg has hired the IT team he needs to answer Senate questions about the November 2020 election and the county’s routers,” Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates said in a written statement. “We look forward to continued cooperation with Mr. Shadegg and the Senate.”