In a defiant letter despatched Monday in response to the state Senate’s request, county Board of Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers wrote: “If you have not discovered the election in Maricopa County was free, truthful and correct but, I am positive you by no means will. The explanation you have not completed your ‘audit’ is since you employed individuals who haven’t any expertise and little understanding of how skilled elections are run.”
“The Board has actual work to do and little time to entertain this journey in never-never land. Please end no matter it’s that you’re doing and launch no matter it’s you will launch,” he added. “There was no fraud, there wasn’t an injection of ballots from Asia nor was there a satellite tv for pc that beamed votes into our election gear.”
The letter concluded with a pointed: “Launch your report and be ready to defend any accusations of misdeeds in courtroom. It is time to transfer on.”
Fueled by former President Donald Trump’s claims about widespread fraud within the 2020 election, Arizona state Senate Republicans demanded an election audit of the ends in Maricopa County that kicked off in April. The audit was carried out by the Florida-based firm Cyber Ninjas, which has no expertise auditing elections and whose chief govt officer promoted Trump’s conspiracy theories concerning the election on social media.
The deadline for the county and Dominion to reply was 4 p.m. ET Monday.
An accompanying letter from the Maricopa County Legal professional’s Workplace additionally famous a number of objections to the subpoenas, together with the shortage of ample discover.
“One week’s discover shouldn’t be adequate time to seek for all probably responsive supplies,” the letter states.
As for producing “all routers” concerned within the election, the Board of Supervisors reiterated it is not going to comply, saying the county’s operations and security might be compromised.
Among the many 11 objections to the subpoena, the Board of Supervisors famous the lawmakers’ request “was not approved by a vote of the Senate” and argued “it’s an abuse of course of or designed merely to harass.”
In a press release launched Monday night time, Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, a Republican, wrote that her chamber is “weighing our choices for securing entry to the routers and passwords,” including that “we’ll attempt to be affected person and provides the County extra time to conform as they’d requested.”
Two GOP state senators have come out towards the so-called audit, nonetheless, making it harder for Republicans, who’ve a razor-thin majority within the chamber, to approve any authorized motion.
Dominion Voting Methods, which supplied the election equipment for the 2020 vote, additionally defied a subpoena and a public data request deadline.
In a letter to the Senate’s lawyer, Dominion legal professional Eric Spencer referred to as the subpoena unconstitutional, writing partially that “occasions have confirmed that the subpoena is invalid and unenforceable.”
Spencer argued within the letter that the Senate’s choice to return tabulator machines final week to Maricopa County “clearly extinguished the Arizona Senate’s claimed curiosity in acquiring Dominion safety keys and passwords (which was non-existent to start with) and rendered the Subpoena moot.”
Dominion additionally objected that the Senate was searching for info that was proprietary. The corporate mentioned it is going to head to courtroom and “search discovery of all supplies associated to Cyber Ninjas and different contractors’ copying, evaluate, switch, storage and some other use of Dominion’s bodily and mental property.”
This story has been up to date with a press release from Arizona Senate President Karen Fann.
CNN’s Devan Cole contributed to this report.
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