AZ Senate Hires Peddler Of 2020 Fraud Nonsense To Audit Dem-Leaning County

The founder and president of the company leading yet another audit of the 2020 election results in Arizona’s largest county boosted an endless stream of nonsense about the 2020 election results on Twitter. 

In a press release Wednesday, state Senate President Karen Fann said Senate leadership — in other words, Senate Republicans — had spent months interviewing various forensic auditors before selecting four firms for another audit of the election results in Maricopa County, where Joe Biden edged out Donald Trump. 

The review will be led by the Florida-based company Cyber Ninjas, which Fann described as a “cyber security company with a focus on application security, working across financial services and government sectors.” 

The Senate’s months-long search for auditors apparently didn’t consider what reporters dug up in a few minutes — a Twitter account seemingly belonging to Cyber Ninjas’ founder, Doug Logan, showing a steady track record of amplifying lies and misinformation about the 2020 election. 

The Arizona Republic, AZ Mirror and others in the state quickly noted that Logan was also an expert witness in a lawsuit against Antrim County, Michigan — the scene of some intense Trumpworld bickering over a small human error by election staff.

Archived versions of the Twitter account seemingly belonging to Logan, which has been deleted, show a diet of junk food election theorizing. 

“This article very clearly articulates why I wholeheartedly support Trump,” the account tweeted on Oct. 26, linking to an article called “Letter to an Anti-Trump Christian Friend.”

“Its about the execution of the policy, which clearly has supported our country the last four years,” the account explained. 

The article, an epistolary column by the theologian Wayne Grudem, argued of Trump, “I support him because of the policies he has enacted and will enact, and in spite of his character flaws.” 

After Election Day, the Logan account hopped on the election theft bandwagon, frequently boosting accounts from Ron Watkins, the former 8chan administrator and a major figure in the QAnon conspiracy theory, and others in the same scene, including Sidney Powell and Lin Wood. 

In mid-November, the account even wrote that German servers for Dominion, the voting systems company, had been “grabbed by ‘the good guys’” — a seeming reference to the the legitimately bonkers theory that the U.S. military had seized overseas election equipment in a raid. 

Cyber Ninjas didn’t return TPM’s request for comment, nor did a spokesperson for the Arizona State Senate Republican Caucus. But Logan told FloridaPolitics.com that the company was “honored” to have been chosen by the Senate. 

“Trustworthy elections are a sacred American tradition,” Logan said. “Our team’s goal will be to validate the results so we can confirm the effectiveness of existing legislation, or point out areas of potential legislative reform. We hope our findings will provide the election confidence that Arizona voters want.”

Dominion, which has pursued a spree of defamation lawsuits over falsehoods about its machines, said in its own statement that the firms selected to the conduct the audit were “beyond biased.”

“Publicly available information shows that they are led by conspiracy theorists and QAnon supporters who have helped spread the Big Lie,” the statement added.

Maricopa County residents needn’t wait on yet another audit of the 2020 results to feel confident about the integrity of their ballots: The results of two independent audits of Maricopa’s voting machines were released more than a month ago. Neither audit found any issue with the election results.