The Ongoing 2020 Election: Maricopa County Recount

[Breccia]

I'm talking about when they try to declare bankruptcy.

Oh, well that is actually a good question I thought about but 90% don't have the answer to. If, when they declare bankruptcy, they turn over to the bankruptcy manager...nothing, they've proven they've destroyed evidence and that's when the prison time starts. Contempt is for not turning it over when asked, but destruction of evidence is its own separate crime. And I have full faith that bankruptcy rules coast to coast say "even though assets are to be sold off, you're not allowed to commit a crime while doing so".

I think we're both debating which is the sharpest knife about to be stuck into this pig, but either way, they're fucking cooked.

[Edge-]

https://apnews.com/article/business-...aff0f14824fcb4

The Donald Trump supporter hired to run a review of the 2020 election in Arizona told the state Senate president he’s starting a new company with some of the same employees as Cyber Ninjas, the old firm he’s closing as it faces massive court fines for refusing to release public records.

Cyber Ninjas founder Doug Logan told Republican Senate President Karen Fann in text messages that he was unable to sell the firm because of “too much negativity around the name,” but he plans to sell off all its assets to pay debts and eventually file for bankruptcy. His lawyer says Logan can’t fulfil a court order to release public records because the company has no money, even though Trump allies raised millions of dollars for the unprecedented partisan election review.

Closing up shop so...they can reopen with the same people doing the same thing.

[Breccia]

"Logan can’t fulfil a court order to release public records because the company has no money"

That's a lie. As you posted, they have money, but even if they didn't, turning over records really doesn't cost all that much. I'd love to see their defense that it would somehow cost more than the $50,000 fine.

[Taifuu]

The company doesn't have enough money to comply with a legal request; but does have enough money to pay the current staff under a new organization. Another classic Saturday morning cartoon villain schtick from the grifter-right.

[postman1782]

The company doesn't have enough money to comply with a legal request; but does have enough money to pay the current staff under a new organization. Another classic Saturday morning cartoon villain schtick from the grifter-right.

Doesn't matter, if they go bankrupt, the judge is going to go after individuals that own and operate it til they comply.

[Taifuu]

Roger that, I don't think there's any way they get out of this one.I guess I just wished they would put in a little more effort in their lies. It's like a common courtesy thing. If you're going to try to destroy the democratic institutions of our Country; can't you at least get someone other than a child to come up with your defense plan?

[PhaelixWW]

Doesn't matter, if they go bankrupt, the judge is going to go after individuals that own and operate it til they comply.

Can they, though? Cyber Ninjas is an LLC.

[postman1782]

Can they, though? Cyber Ninjas is an LLC.

The judge said as much. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jayadki...h=dea9c5f7f26c

Also, there is this part of this article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...says-farewell/

Judge John Hannah of the Maricopa County Superior Court has threatened to hold Logan personally responsible for the $50,000-per-day fines facing his company.
In a text to Fann, Logan said he was unable to sell his company because of “too much negativity around the name.” He said he plans to sell its assets and file for bankruptcy.
Logan is planning to start a new company with some Cyber Ninjas employees, he told the Associated Press, but he denied the move was an effort to escape Cyber Ninjas’ legal problems.

Shuttering the firm won’t end the fines, Judge Hannah warned. “The court is not going to accept the assertion that Cyber Ninjas is an empty shell and that no one is responsible for seeing that it complies,” he said.

Logan filed the paperwork to start a new company called Akolytos last year shortly before Fann announced Cyber Ninjas would conduct the audit, independent cybersecurity reporter Kim Zetter reports. It’s not clear, however, if that’s the firm Logan’s planning for his next venture.

[Dontrike]

The judge said as much. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jayadki...h=dea9c5f7f26c

Also, there is this part of this article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...says-farewell/

And of course he'd basically name the new company Acolyte, because having neon signs that say "Evil Corp. Dr." would be too subtle.

[Edge-]

https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-513648382331

CLAIM: Videos of election workers in Arizona’s Maricopa County photographing ballots and using a USB flash drive in a secure area, and a photograph of destroyed election equipment, show election workers committing potential legal violations.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. Video footage from different dates and different locations was spliced together to make it falsely appear that an election worker was wrongfully photographing ballots, according to a county official. The footage involving the flash drive showed a routine data retrieval process, while the photograph of an exposed hard drive was from a professional forensic audit. The videos and images show activity in the elections department in 2021, and had no impact on the 2020 election.

Weird how all this "proof" always ends up being a bunch of dishonestly edited bullshit.

[Edge-]

So...it's not over yet.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news...er/6601527001/

We recently learned that a data center, possibly leased to Cyber Ninjas, Inc, or StratTech Solutions, may be housing records concerning the Arizona State Senate's audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County. Please confirm as soon as possible whether this information is correct and, if so, when and on what terms the Senate may access the facility or its resources.

This was a letter addressed to Cyber Ninjas and three other companies following credible allegations that they may be retaining state records on one of their servers illegally.

What liberal wrote this?

Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, Republican. The same Karen Fann that hired the Cyber Ninjas.

Now this could be related to the lawsuit against the Senate for records regarding the "audit", the records which Cyber Ninjas is ostensibly being fined $50K a day for not providing. It probably is. It definitely is.

Oh, and they haven't been friends for a while -

Fann is withholding $100,000 of a $150,000 contract from Logan. She accused the company in October of breaching its contract by not turning over audit records. Two months later, in December, Fann said she would pay in full once the audit is completed.

No wonder Cyber Ninjas went bankrupt.

Don't worry about Senator Fann, she's retiring after her term is up. Conveniently right after she was thrust onto the national state for overseeing a sham audit.

[Breccia]

"Fann is withholding $100,000 of a $150,000 contract from Logan."

This part doesn't matter. One, they're going bankrupt, $100,000 won't stop that. Two, they got millions from their shadow backers. What the state paid was irrelevant to their bottom line.

Of course...

"She accused the company in October of breaching its contract"

It could have been $1 and they'd stil be in breach of contract.

What I hope is, Cyber Ninjas can't give away or sell assets -- assets like the data center issue -- while they owe money, are obligated to hand them over, and of course are bankrupt so shouldn't be allowed to handle their own affairs. For added fun, by dissolving Cyber Ninjas Logan has put himself at personal risk. I mean, bankruptcy is not a "get out of all obligations free" card. I suppose Cyber Ninjas could have been an LLC of course.

Or, there could be contempt charges. With jail time.

[PhaelixWW]

For added fun, by dissolving Cyber Ninjas Logan has put himself at personal risk. I mean, bankruptcy is not a "get out of all obligations free" card. I suppose Cyber Ninjas could have been an LLC of course.

Or, there could be contempt charges. With jail time.

Yeah, it is. When I brought it up before, this was the reply:

Doesn't matter, if they go bankrupt, the judge is going to go after individuals that own and operate it til they comply.

Can they, though? Cyber Ninjas is an LLC.

The judge said as much. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jayadki...h=dea9c5f7f26c

Also, there is this part of this article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...says-farewell/

So they can go after a successor company, and the judge can hold Logan accountable for the court fines. I'm not sure if the bankruptcy itself can touch Logan, though.

[Edge-]

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/effor...ans-media/?amp

So who all was involved in this malarky outside of the Republicans in the AZ Senate and Cyber Ninjas?

Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Dan Bongino, and Charlie Kirk, apparently. Records indicate that they were looped in early by the Republican Senate in order to create and control the narrative around this, and this was done through "backchannels".

Oh, and Karen Fann, AZ Senate President, was chatting with Phil Waldron and complaining about how some conservative influencers on YouTube and social media were making it hard to find an "independent" audit firm.

Who's Phil Waldron? The retired Army colonel that was behind the 36 page Power-Point presentation on how to overturn the election, the one that made it to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows - https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/don...don-t-n1285910

[Bluespiderman57]

Just when you thought it was safe to say there was no fraud in Maricopa County. This winter, prepare yourself for the sequal no one asked for.

Here we go again, with another money sucking Arizona election audit

The Great Arizona Hunt for Election Fraud continues as a special master and three – count ‘em, three – IT experts from across the nation gear up to examine Maricopa County’s election equipment.

Yeah, I know. You thought the audit of the 2020 election was over, that it ended in September when the Senate’s own Trump supporting auditors could find no evidence of widespread fraud.

O ye, of far too much faith that, at some point, sanity will sink in.

That the state Senate’s Trump contingent will accept the fact that their guy lost, freeing us poor taxpayers from having to continue shelling out money to chase a conspiracy that doesn’t – and didn’t – exist.

They won’t and so we will. Open our wallets wide once again, that is.

Another audit for an already answered question
This time for a special master and three IT experts to answer the already answered question:

Was the county’s election management system hooked up to the internet and thus vulnerable to Chinese (or maybe Venezuelan?) hackers who, as the conspiracy theory goes, switched thousands of Donald Trump votes to Joe Biden?

The county has long said the equipment wasn’t connected to the internet.

The Republican-run Maricopa County Board of Supervisors hired two sets of elections experts who concluded that the election equipment wasn’t connected to the internet.

The Senate’s own audit provided the most convincing evidence of all that the election equipment wasn’t connected to the internet. (More on that in a moment.)

None of it was good enough for the Senate’s conspiracy crew. Republican senators demanded that the county turn over its computer routers but the county refused, saying their release could result in the release of confidential information about county residents.

So, we're paying John Shadegg $500 an hour
Facing the potential loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in state-shared funding, the county and Senate finally agreed to a compromise.

Former Rep. John Shadegg is that compromise. He’s a former Republican congressman who is serving as a $500-an-hour special master, contracted by the county to answer the senators’ detailed questions about the routers.

To do that, Shadegg on Friday hired three IT experts, each of whom will travel to Arizona to examine the county’s routers and the Splunk logs that are used to analyze computerized data.

We don’t yet know how much those three experts will cost county taxpayers. Shadegg already has billed us $16,800, and the examination of equipment has not yet even begun.

Of course, that’s chicken feed compared to the millions of dollars that county and state taxpayers already have paid to accommodate a bunch of sore losers who have screamed so loudly and so often that the election was stolen – without proof – that now a shockingly number of people believe them.

And so we continue paying whatever it takes to produce facts in order to change apparently unchangeable minds.

If there was an internet connection ... oh, never mind
It’s a colossal waste of our money.

Consider that the Senate’s own audit already produced the most convincing evidence of all that there was no funny business afoot by hackers or nefarious state actors.

Think about it.

The reason the election equipment was supposedly hacked, as the conspiracy theory goes, was to change thousands of votes from Trump to Biden.

But the Senate’s own Cyber Ninja auditors hand counted the paper ballots, all 2.1 million of them.

That hand count matched the machine tally by Dominion Voting Systems. And both counts showed Biden got more votes than Trump.

But if the machines had been hacked, wouldn’t that hand count be diff … oh, never mind.

They really are trying to push this shit out to the 2022 elections. It's kind of impressive they have been able to keep this going for so long.

[Edge-]

Just when you thought it was safe to say there was no fraud in Maricopa County. This winter, prepare yourself for the sequal no one asked for.

Here we go again, with another money sucking Arizona election audit



They really are trying to push this shit out to the 2022 elections. It's kind of impressive they have been able to keep this going for so long.

Man, they're just giving their buddies bullshit work to get paid nowadays. I hope the taxpayers aren't gonna get stuck with this shit and it's being funded by more wealthy conservatives who don't mind setting money on fire.

[Bluespiderman57]

Man, they're just giving their buddies bullshit work to get paid nowadays. I hope the taxpayers aren't gonna get stuck with this shit and it's being funded by more wealthy conservatives who don't mind setting money on fire.

Honestly yeah that makes more sense. The fact they can still use it to call into question any elections results they don't like is just icing on the cake.

[Edge-]

Honestly yeah that makes more sense. The fact they can still use it to call into question any elections results they don't like is just icing on the cake.

I'm just delighted to see the party of "small government" and "fiscal conservatism" as they're blowing money on literal fantasies.

[Breccia]

Just when you--

FUCK the thread moved!

There is something to be said about using election fraud nobody can prove as a campaign issue to an election.

As we know, as of Jan 28th and near as I can tell still true, Cyber Ninjas is still refusing to turn over records, despite (a) their contract saying they must and (b) declaring bankruptcy which means they're about to lose control over everything they used to own. We might have skipped the part where their lawyer claimed the judge's order was not clear, a claim the judge said was trolling and risked contempt charges. The CEO...I guess former CEO?...is also using "Arizona hasn't paid us" as an excuse not to turn over records. Gee, a Trump supporter upset they weren't paid, what are the odds? Anyhow, there's an easy fix for this: the contempt charges rack up until the $100,000 contract is awarded, then immediately seized, they've been paid, problem solved.

The CEO is also claiming that money he gets from selling off Cyber Ninjas' assets is being used to pay his subcontractors, which he said in the same breath as saying he did most of the work and only hired one or two people. Oh, and yes he's selling things off himself, in bankruptcy you're not supposed to do that, so he hasn't technically declared bankruptcy yet. That means he owns those records and is required to turn them over. And the fine, of course. Oh, and if he sells off records that were due Arizona in a previous contract, the fun begins with other state charges. It's also worth noting that he's expressed concern that the names of the people he work with could be made public, which of course, is not what you say when you're running a company that claims to be trustworthy.

There is no way the CEO (former or not) gets out of this "alive". He either turns the records over as required by law, or gets fined and/or jailed. What he's doing is apparently a textbook violation of Arizona law and he's basically out of appeals (SCOTUS doesn't "do" state laws so much). To add to his fuckeditude, he said under oath he got $2 million less in donations than the review cost, and was owed $1.9 million.

No, he didn't say from who. Well that's not true, $100,000 from Arizona, the other $1.8 million assumed to be people who didn't pay him when he couldn't provide results they liked. I personally don't think you should be able to say, under oath, what you took in payment/donations, without being able to prove it with records. Sorry, but he's lost the ability to be taken at his word.

And finally, he sid that it would take some time to review the documents he was asked for, to decide what was okay to turn over and what wasn't. First, I don't think he gets to make that decision. Secondly, he was asked in November. He had two months and change, during which he had nothing else to do.

What will be the best end to this phony IT audit, is for Cyber Ninjas' CEO, employees and subcontractors to be sued, fined, or jailed as soon as that IT audit begins. A giant "don't fuck with us" from Maricopa and Arizona as a message to the group considering whether to break a government contract.

[Edge-]

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/col...ta-2022-02-17/

Fuck it, this is close enough to an election thread.

A Colorado elections clerk was sued on Thursday after he copied data from voting machines with the help of two men with ties to groups supporting the false conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was stolen from former Republican President Donald Trump.

Dallas Schroeder, who oversees elections in Elbert County, east of Denver, was sued by Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold for making two copies of his county's voting system hard drives and then handing the images to "unauthorized people", according to the lawsuit.

Toss these people in jail for a long time please. A really, really long time.