Maricopa County defies state subpoena seeking to expand GOP ballot review, calling it an ‘adventure in never-never land’
By Rosalind S. Helderman
Yesterday at 5:31 p.m. EDT
Elected leaders in Arizona’s largest county responded defiantly Monday to a new subpoena issued by the state Senate that sought local computer routers and internal logs to bolster a GOP-commissioned review of the 2020 presidential election results.
Senate President Karen Fann (R) has said the items are needed to conclude the controversial audit of the election in Maricopa County, which private contractors have been conducting on behalf of the Senate since April.
County officials rejected her claim in a scathing letter.
“It is now August of 2021. The election of November 2020 is over. If you haven’t figured out that the election in Maricopa County was free, fair, and accurate yet, I’m not sure you ever will,” Board of Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers (R) wrote in a letter to the Senate on Monday.
He added: “The Board has real work to do and little time to entertain this adventure in never-never land. Please finish whatever it is that you are doing and release whatever it is you are going to release.”
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The Republican-led Maricopa County Board of Supervisors has said that the routers are used for county services other than elections, including the sheriff’s department, and that giving them to a private company could compromise security. What’s more, they said they are reluctant to assist an audit that they believe has been run ineptly and is undermining faith in democracy.
In his letter Monday, Sellers told the Senate that there was no “injection of ballots from Asia” nor “a satellite that beamed votes into our election equipment” — both unsubstantiated allegations advanced by Trump supporters.
“It’s time for all elected officials to tell the truth and stop encouraging conspiracies,” he added.
Sellers’s terse missive was accompanied by a separate five-page letter from a county lawyer, which raised various legal and practical objections to the subpoena.
more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/maricopa-county-subpoena-senate/2021/08/02/a901f690-f3ce-11eb-9068-bf463c8c74de_story.html
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