Former U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday, April 27, that Arizona Democrats’ opposition to an audit of the state’s Maricopa County election results is not only an admission that they used an “unconstitutional” election process, but also an indication that they are “completely out of their minds. “.
In a statement sent to Newsmax TV by his Save America PAC on Tuesday, Trump wrote: “Radical leftist Democrats are fighting the 2020 presidential election scam now taking place in the great state of Arizona forensic audit, have gone completely insane. They sent a team of more than 100 lawyers to try to stop it because they know what the results of the audit initiated by the Arizona Senate will be – and that’s not good for the Democrats.”
Trump emphasized that election transparency through independent audits should be a good thing for American democracy. But instead, Democrats have ostensibly shown an intent to cover up the truth.
“That audit was conducted independently, and there was no advantage to either party. But Democrats don’t want to hear anything about it because they know that they lost Arizona and other fraudulent election states by a wide margin,” Trump’s statement said, “They also know that the Arizona Legislature barely approved many of their election requirements, which is completely unconstitutional.”
Trump said that free and fair elections are essential to American democracy and that the audit is simply about sharing “the truth” with the American people. “The people of Arizona are outraged, and so are the people of our country,” Trump said at the end of his statement, “If we can’t have free and fair elections, we don’t have a country. The audit must continue. America deserves the truth!”
Currently, the Arizona Republican-controlled Senate has used its subpoena power to take over all of Maricopa County’s 2.1 million ballots and the machines that counted them, as well as computer hard drives filled with data. These items are now in the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, Maricopa County.
Trump had already predicted on Friday (April 23) that the audit would reveal widespread election fraud and prompt similar reviews in other states where he lost elections. “Thank you to the Senator from Arizona and others for beginning this comprehensive forensic audit,” Trump said in a statement Friday, “and I predict that the results will be stunning!”
“Cyber Ninja” had begun a manual recount of the county’s ballots on April 23, but Democrats filed a lawsuit asking the judge to end the audit. Republican-appointed Judge Christopher Coury ordered the company to comply with ballot and voter secrecy laws and asked them to turn over written procedures and training manuals before a hearing on the Democrats’ request on Monday (April 26). And he offered to suspend the vote count over the weekend if the Democrats posted a $1 million bond to cover the additional costs, but the party declined. So the audit was not suspended.
But on April 26, Judge Daniel Martin took over the case. He is a Democrat-appointed judge who worked at Brown & Bain, the firm that merged with Perkins Coie. He took over the case after Republican-appointed Judge Curry recused himself on April 25 because he had a working relationship with a lawyer involved in the case. And a lot of things have taken off since then.
Democrats in Arizona claimed that contractors hired by the state Senate did not properly protect ballots and equipment. Other journalists claim he was able to access the equipment and ballots without being questioned.
Kory Langhofer, an attorney representing the Senate, told Judge Martin that the Senate “always intended to comply with the law,” but this case raises the issues required by law. He also said the judge should not have called off the audit because it was already underway.
“Even a one-day injunction could derail this audit,” Alexander Kolodin, a lawyer for Cyber Ninja, one of the four companies conducting the process, told the court.
Martin ultimately agreed to continue the audit, but left open the possibility of changing his mind at the next hearing on Wednesday, April 28.
At the next hearing, Cyber Ninja’s motion to have some of its documents sealed will be heard at oral argument. The company says the documents contain sensitive information detailing its security and chain-of-custody procedures and operations.
In addition, a motion to intervene filed by Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, Democrats opposed to the audit and the Arizona First Amendment Coalition was also approved by Martin. The motion was represented by the law firm of Perkins Coie.
Marc Elias, an Arizona election lawyer, is a partner at Perkins Coie. He chairs the law firm’s political law group and is one of the top lawyers for the Democratic Party.
Elias has previously tweeted that the Arizona Republic could be “sanctioned” for its previous lawsuit seeking a manual vote count audit in Maricopa County.
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