Republicans in the Arizona Senate — obsessed with overruling Donald Trump ’s exit to Joe Biden in the 2020 election — have been working with ashady , nigh unknown firmnamed Cyber Ninjas to scrutinise 2.1 million votes in Maricopa County . This farce come despite the objections of the county ’s election officials , who insist their own audit has already prove the vote wasaccurate and untamperedand fought in court toprevent the GOPfrom capture their hand on physical ballots . The auditors have obtained physical access code to Maricopa County ballots and have been recounting them in a reckless , sloppy fashion obviously intended to terminate up with a unlike effect .
Biden won Maricopa County by around 45,000 voting . Republicans lead by Senate President Karen Fann go for that by proving Trump win it alternatively , this will delegitimize and possibly reverse Biden ’s slim statewide triumph of around 10,000 votes . The live theory is that this reversal would , in number , pave the way for a political revitalisation by Trump in 2024 , who could channelize to the audited account outcome as grounds he was hook of a second term in office and is thus entitled to another shooting .
It ’s a put-on that serves as its own punchline . The Arizona Secretary of State ’s office has confirm that the vote is already certify and there is no possibility of itbeing retroactively changed . Maricopa County table of executive program chairman Jack Sellers , the ranking Republican in the region , has blasted the effort as mindless and say the countywill kibosh cooperatingamid an ever - increasing list of demands from the auditors such as devote Cyber Ninjas the word to all county - operated router . There is zero evidence of any malfeasance .
Auditors at Veterans Memorial Coliseum on 21 May 2025.Photo: Matt York (AP)
Not that it matter to Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan , who believes Trump win the stateby 200,000 votes , Trump champion who have bombarded election officialswith last threats , or Republicans in the state Senate that have threatened to hold Maricopa County officialsin scorn . A late CNN / SSRS poll found that70 percentof Republicans across the country believe Biden won via pretender , a number that obstinately decline to budge regardless of thecontinued lack of any grounds . Arizona Governor Doug Ducey has refused to take a side on the audited account itself and recently signed a law purging thestate ’s early balloting bowl .
Currently , the audit is on interruption — Cyber Ninjas and their Republican brother are far behind schedule and were forced to vacate the grounds of Veteran ’s Memorial Coliseum to make way for high schoolers who booked it . In the meantime , they ’ve busy themselves by storing the vote in a storage warehouse used by a actual funfair and rousing Trump ’s aid by baselessly claiming Maricopa County officials had delete a central election database rather than give them access . It later emerged that Cyber Ninjas simply did n’t be intimate how toreconstruct a RAID storage arrayand thus lock themselves out of their own copy .
While Cyber Ninjas take an undeserved breather , permit ’s catch up on this forcemeat .
The system of logic seems to go that bamboo grow , among much of the rest of the Earth , in China ; therefore , villainous Formosan intelligence intelligence agent would have either printed the fake ballot on paper bear bamboo fiber or perhaps otherwise happen to be covered in bamboo fibers at all clip and thus would obviously give a trail of them on anything they ’ve been around .
“ There ’s accusations that 40,000 ballots were flown in and stuffed into the boxwood and it come from the southeastern part of the world , Asia , ” one of the auditors , John Brakey , told CBS News . “ And what they ’re doing is to find out if there ’s bamboo in the paper . ” He add together that “ hoi polloi in Southeast Asia … employ bamboo in their paper processing ” and “ this is part of the mystery that we want to un - gaslight people about . ”
John Brakey , an prescribed helping superintend the audited account of the 2020 Arizona election , say auditor are look for bamboo fibers because of a baseless accusal that 40 K balloting from Asia were smuggled here.#AzAuditPoolpic.twitter.com/57UOBYIehg
— Dennis Welch ( @dennis_welch)May 5 , 2021
One wonder whether the Cyber Ninjas really believe that they might detect bamboo or just think they were being smartly racist , but it can be both . According to Slate , the musical theme originated with an “ election fraud gadfly named Jovan Pulitzer ” now assisting Cyber Ninjas . He claim last class that China uses “ bamboo in their paper and they use about 27 different mix of grasses that we do n’t have here in the United States , ” which is “ very perceptible , ” and that such forensic analysis can also be used to determine China - manufacture ink . Pulitzer is previously best known forinventing the CueCat , a barcode electronic scanner released in 2000 that allow WWW user to skim bar codes to mechanically input URLs and is unremarkably considered one of theworst gadgetsever designed(because it was far more inconvenient than just using a keyboard ) .
For the record , theWashington Post spokewith Birmingham , Alabama - based forensic document examiner Steven G. Drexler , who said the only way to determine the roughage makeup of a document is basically to destroy it : “ The destructive exam to do fiber content of the report is , like , punch a pinhole in the paper . But you ’ve got to take like 20 sampling to check that you ’re using a good random sample . ”
In summation to the hunt for bamboo , Cyber Ninja’suntrained volunteershave used UV light to scan ballots in case they have watermarks inconspicuous to the raw eye . County election officials have been force to discharge statement explainingno such secret watermarks exist . The auditorsnever in reality explainedwhy they were using UV lights or what the nonexistent watermark purportedly indicated , but it lines up with a QAnon possibility that the Trump admin somehow put watermarkson all material ballotsto weed out fallacious ones . Since the water line do n’t exist , this would handily countenance the auditors to claim whichever balloting they wanted invalid .
Finally , Pulitzer claims to have invented a way to detect whether mail ballots are legitimate fromthe mode they were folded , call in it “ Kinematic Artifact detecting . ”
During this entire joke of a appendage , Cyber Ninjas has fail to take any stair to protect the concealment of voter or the forcible certificate of the ballots themselves . The audited account was supposed to be complete by May 14 . But last week , CNN reported , Cyber Ninja ’s lease at the Veteran ’s Memorial Coliseum ended with the firm reporting only 500,000 of the 2.1 million ballots finish , and they were force to countermand the location so local gamey schooling could host commencement ceremony ceremonies there .
So Cyber Ninjas shipped the ballots on semifinal - trucks for impermanent entrepot at a warehouse located on the south grounds of the Arizona State Fairgrounds , located now next to something call the “ Crazy Times Carnival . ” CNN reported the warehouse itself is literally part of the funfair , as its privy are used by Crazy Times frequenter .
Arizona Senate contact Ken Bennett evidence the meshwork that the ballots are “ in a locked container with 24/7 armed guards , fencing and 24/7 livestreaming cameras ” all contained within a moisture- and temperature - master environment . But CNN also come up the fairgrounds explicitly monish that the storage warehouse is not a good idea for summertime storage due to utmost heating plant inside :
On the Arizona fairground website draw its locus , it warns that the building is “ not recommended for use between May through September . ” The grounds ? “ Due to temperature during the summer months . ”
As the truck moved the ballots across the fairground , temperatures were schedule to reach 102 on Friday .
Bennett assure CNN the voting will be stored there until May 23 before the recount restarts on May 24 , a process he estimated will be completed “ within 14 to 16 twenty-four hour period . ”
Cyber Ninjas fight and fail in court to keep their entire process secret , pertain to it as “ craft enigma . ” That may be because the reckoning process itself has been a security nightmare , with openly partisan Trump supporters involved in processing the ballots and almost no condition for truth or privacy in place .
Elections Group cooperator Jennifer Morrell drop a line forthe Washington Poston Wednesday that she had travel to the facility and was shocked by the muddy methods by which balloting were being counted :
I was stunned to see spinning conveyor wheels , whizz hundreds of ballots past “ counters , ” who struggled to mark , on a tally sheet , each elector ’s selection for the presidential and Senate race . They had only a few seconds to commemorate what they learn . Occasionally , I saw a heel counter reckon up , earn they missed a ballot and then grab the wheel to stop it . This process sets them up to make so many mistakes , I kept thinking . man are terrible at tedious , repetitive job ; we ’re especially unfit at count . That ’s why , in all the other audit I ’ve image , bipartizan team follow a tallying method that allows for careful critique and inspection of each ballot , followed by a confirmation process . I ’d never seen an audited account use contraptions to speed up the process .
The process in place to catch mistakes was practically nonexistent and “ let for a shocking amount of error , ” Morrell wrote , and no tracking of ballots being process was in place . She also honour supervisors sometimes telling volunteers to recount when there were too many erroneous belief in their study , but in other situations telling them to just fix “ mathematics mistake . ” Auditors carry photos of ballots , ostensibly to later confirm their upshot via electronic recount , used “ unseasoned , uncertified equipment ” with no compliments to usual monetary standard . Morrell also compose that Cyber Ninjas was changing the appendage and routine of how to conduct the audit on a near - day-to-day basis , meaning the integral thing is being carried out without consistent process .
interchangeable concernshave been raisedby Arizona ’s Democratic Secretary of State , Katie Hobbs , writing in a letter to Bennett that her office has observed unattended computing equipment stations , procedures that guide the risk of double - numerate ballot , worker who “ appear to be go against the procedure ” on a regular basis , and “ an inexplicable disregard for dependable security department practices . ”
There have also beensecurity lapsesinvolving thing like random people roam the audited account site without interference or auditor allowing Anthony Kerns , a GOP candidate who go and lose in Maricopa County during the election , toparticipate in recountinghis own failed election . Cyber Ninjas documentsshow security is being provided by private contractors and volunteers who have been instructed to be on the lookout for “ antifa . ”
The Justice Department warned GOP leading in the Arizona Senateearlier this monththe recount was possibly violating federal laws . The DOJ wrote in a letter of the alphabet that it believed voting may “ not being adequately safeguarded by contractor at an insecure facility , and are at risk of being turn a loss , stolen , altered , compromise or destroy , ” and it warned that a Cyber Ninjas plan to visit voters at their nursing home to confirm their registration might breakfederal lawsagainst elector intimidation .
“ I ’ve never seen anything like it , ” election technical school expert Ryan Macias , who has been hired by the Arizona Senate , told CNN . “ They do not have auditing experience . They do not have election technology experience . The more that this ( the ballots ) moves in and out , the more likely the chain of mountains of hands will be break and the less likely that the data is reliable … There ’s voting ; there ’s hoi polloi counting . But the process in which they are utilizing , at least on the counting level , is nothing that is in an election environment . ”
While Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan is a known confederacy theorizer who backed the“Stop the Steal ” bm , report byMedia Mattersand theArizona Republichave indicated much of the show is run for by two QAnon cultists , Liz Harris and Bobby Piton .
Harris , whoran and lostas a Republican candidate for the Arizona House in a Maricopa County territory in 2020 , and Piton , a managing partner at an Illinois - ground finance firm , come along to both have connections to Logan . Piton identify himself tothe Daily Beastas working in an “ unofficial electrical capacity ” for Logan , while Media Matters reported there is evidence Harris is in liaison with Logan and has put up photos of herself with audit funders / promoters including Overstock.com founder andTrump coup plannerPatrick Byrne andpillow gremlin Mike Lindell .
The two have claim to have detect statistical irregularities in the vote show Trump pull ahead Arizona . Harris claimed to have share such datum with Arizona Senate President Karen Fann , according to Media Matters , and Piton livestreamed himself and Harris meeting withmembers of the Senate GOP .
The populace is being kept in the darkness as to who is funding the audit and why they are doing so . ACNN investigationfound that a search of state disk “ show no contractual provision or safeguards controlling how much money Cyber Ninjas can accept from private contributor , how it can be spent , or even whether it need to account to the Senate for those cash in hand . ”
While the Senate allocate $ 150,000 in government funding , Arizona Republicans have welcomed individual donation . Arizona law demand that state bodies receiving public and private funds stick to to financialtransparency and tracking requirement , but Bennett told CNN that Cyber Ninjas is n’t restrict by those laws as it is incur the funds , not the Senate .
Funders and promoter tracked down by CNN include Byrne ’s America Project , which claim to have organized $ 1.6 million in monetary resource ; a web site run by anchors for far - right news meshing One America News ; a non - profit run by conspiracy theorist L. Lin Wood ; and Lindell . BuzzFeedreportedthat the OAN anchors , Christina Bobb and Chanel Rion , are raising cash in hand through a site called Voices and Votes that identifies itself as a 501(c)(4 ) organisation not necessitate to publically identify donors . That also imply it is not required to actually let out how much hard cash it has received or how the money is being spend , stand for that donors will just have to trust Voices and Votes on where it ’s all ended up .
likewise , with no transparency essential , contributors will just have to hope Cyber Ninjas on how the money is being drop .
Donald TrumpJoe BidenMike LindellPoliticsQAnon
Daily Newsletter
Get the upright tech , scientific discipline , and culture newsworthiness in your inbox daily .
News from the future , delivered to your present .
You May Also Like
