Headline USA by Tony Sifert
Maricopa County admits they DELETED and moved the election data to hide it from auditors AFTER they got a subpoena
This is a total cover up, and they admit it! pic.twitter.com/W6jD2X8NwP
— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) October 7, 2021
Under questioning Thursday from US Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., as part of hearings about the Arizona Senateâs recent election audit, the vice chairman of Maricopa Countyâs Board of Supervisors admitted that it withheld certain files from the probe of the 2020 presidential election.
In response to Biggsâs question as to whether the relevant files were âdeleted,â Vice Chair Bill Gates said that the files were not deleted but rather âarchived,â and claimed that the archived files were not given to auditors because they were not specifically asked for in the Senateâs subpoena.
âWe responded to the subpoena,â said Gates, evincing a certain self-regard as he put his bureaucratic prowess on display.
Neither Gates nor Chairman Jack Sellers could confirm the countyâs standard practices regarding the âpurgingâ of election information in the aftermath of an election, but Sellers cited the need to âmake room for additional dataâ for forthcoming elections on servers with âlimited space.â
Also present was Ken Bennett, Arizonaâs secretary of state from 2009-2015, who acted as special liaison between the independent auditors and the state Senate during the process.
Bennett confessed to finding âlaughableâ the countyâs willingness to parse words in order to avoid compliance.
After video of the hearing went viral on Twitter, the Associated Press, as part of its âeffort to address widely shared misinformationâ sent a âfact-checkerâ to confirm the distinction between âdeleteâ and âarchive,â but failed to show that election data was not withheld.
On Sept. 24, the Arizona Senate Judiciary Committee released a 110-page forensic audit report (see the executive summary).
The long-awaited report concluded that âthe election should not be certified, and the reported results are not reliable,â in part because the auditor, Cyber Ninjas, âdiscovered that Maricopa County had purged the election management system database, deleted election files, and corrupted ballot images.â
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich has warned Maricopa County that further investigation and litigation is possible regarding election officials handling of the audit.
