Democrats to investigate Arizona’s conspiracy-driven pro-Trump audit

The House Oversight Committee will investigate a “highly unusual” partisan vote audit of more than 2 million ballots cast in Maricopa County, Arizona, where Republicans in the state Senate are leading a review of 2020 election results performed by a private company whose founder supported Donald Trump’s election lies and the “Stop the Steal” campaign.

In a wide-ranging request for documents, the Democratic committee chairs have asked whether the firm, Cyber Ninjas, had any communications with the former president and his administration or campaign officials, Maricopa County officials, and Trump-linked associates Rudy Giuliani, Mike Lindell, Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, who have amplified “stolen election” conspiracy theories and other vote fraud falsehoods.

The committee is “seeking to determine whether the privately funded audit conducted by your company in Arizona protects the right to vote or is instead an effort to promote baseless conspiracy theories, undermine confidence in America’s elections, and reverse the result of a free and fair election for partisan gain,” chairs Carolyn Maloney and Jamie Raskin wrote.

The committee gave Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan two weeks to respond to the request, sent on 14 July.

Their letter mirrors concerns raised by voting rights advocates, elections officials and the US Department of Justice, which warned Arizona Republicans that their “audit” process may be violating voters’ civil rights.

US Attorney General Merrick Garland has also criticised partisan-driven audits in the wake of 2020 election, arguing that the “justifications proffered in support of post-election audits and restrictions on voting have relied on allegations of voting fraud in the 2020 election that have been refuted by … every court, federal and state, that has considered them.”

Similar audits are underway in Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania, states that the former president definitively lost to Joe Biden.

“Every one violates at least some of the following five standards: transparency, objectivity, prewritten and comprehensive procedures, competence, and security,” according to the Brennan Center for Justice, which performed an analysis of partisan post-election ballot reviews.

“They also waste taxpayer money,” the organisation’s president Michael Waldman wrote. “The fraudit in Maricopa County alone has cost taxpayers an estimated $2.4 million.”

The process underway in Arizona, now weeks behind deadline, has been accused of going down a conspiracy theory-filled rabbit hole relying on “completely unnecessary” gear to find evidence of voter fraud, including the baseless idea that ballots may contain bamboo fibers – alleged “evidence” that they were imported from China – or contained watermarks, mirroring a QAnon-adjacent belief that the former president secretly marked ballots to “prove” fake ones.

Elections officials performed 15 hand-count audits, including three in Maricopa County, where a majority of the state’s population lives, for Arizona’s general election. Maricopa County also conducted a forensic audit of ballot counting for the 2020 elections, with equipment and software tests performed by independent firms. All confirmed the outcome and found no discrepancies in results.

“Though conspiracy theorists are undoubtedly cheering on these types of inspections – perhaps providing financial support because of their use – they do little other than to further marginalise the professionalism and intent of this ‘audit’,” Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs wrote in May.