Maricopa County defies latest subpoena request from Arizona state Senate seeking to expand 2020 ballot review
Former Secretary of State Ken Bennett (right) works to move ballots from the 2020 general election at Veterans Memorial Coliseum on May 1
By Stephanie Becker, CNN
Maricopa County and Dominion Voting Systems are rebuffing the latest subpoenas from Arizona’s GOP-led Senate for election materials related to the so-called audit of 2020 election ballots.
In a defiant letter sent Monday in response to the state Senate’s request, county Board of Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers wrote: “If you haven’t figured out the election in Maricopa County was free, fair and accurate yet, I’m sure you never will. The reason you haven’t finished your ‘audit’ is because you hired people who have no experience and little understanding of how professional elections are run.”
“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,” he added. “There was no fraud, there wasn’t an injection of ballots from Asia nor was there a satellite that beamed votes into our election equipment.”
The letter concluded with a pointed: “Release your report and be prepared to defend any accusations of misdeeds in court. It’s time to move on.”
Fueled by former President Donald Trump’s claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 election, Arizona state Senate Republicans demanded an election audit of the results in Maricopa County that kicked off in April. The audit was conducted by the Florida-based company Cyber Ninjas, which has no experience auditing elections and whose chief executive officer promoted Trump’s conspiracy theories about the election on social media.
As part of the review, Arizona’s Senate issued subpoenas last week asking Maricopa County for documents, passwords, security information, changes of voter registration records, signed ballot envelopes or images, documents related to any breaches of the election system, information about changes in voting records, county routers and IP addresses and computer logs from two months before and three months after the election.
The deadline for the county and Dominion to respond was 4 p.m. ET Monday.
An accompanying letter from the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office also noted several objections to the subpoenas, including the lack of adequate notice.
“One week’s notice is not sufficient time to search for all potentially responsive materials,” the letter states.
As for producing “all routers” involved in the election, the Board of Supervisors reiterated it will not comply, saying the county’s operations and safety could be compromised.
Among the 11 objections to the subpoena, the Board of Supervisors noted the lawmakers’ request “was not authorized by a vote of the Senate” and argued “it is an abuse of process or designed merely to harass.”
In a statement released Monday night, Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, a Republican, wrote that her chamber is “weighing our options for securing access to the routers and passwords,” adding that “we will try to be patient and give the County more time to comply as they had requested.”
Two GOP state senators have come out against the so-called audit, however, making it more difficult for Republicans, who have a razor-thin majority in the chamber, to approve any legal action.
The Board of Supervisors lost a previous court fight to quash subpoenas for election materials, including the nearly 2.1 million ballots, voting machines and tabulators. That led to the months-long, controversial hand count and, later, machine count of ballots. The ballots and tabulators were returned to the county on July 29, while the voting machines were returned earlier. The secretary of state’s office has declared the voting machines unusable because of the Senate audit.
Dominion Voting Systems, which provided the election machinery for the 2020 vote, also defied a subpoena and a public records request deadline.
In a letter to the Senate’s lawyer, Dominion attorney Eric Spencer called the subpoena unconstitutional, writing in part that “events have confirmed that the subpoena is invalid and unenforceable.”
Spencer argued in the letter that the Senate’s decision to return tabulator machines last week to Maricopa County “clearly extinguished the Arizona Senate’s claimed interest in obtaining Dominion security keys and passwords (which was non-existent to begin with) and rendered the Subpoena moot.”
Dominion also objected that the Senate was seeking information that was proprietary. The company said it will head to court and “seek discovery of all materials related to Cyber Ninjas and other contractors’ copying, review, transfer, storage and any other use of Dominion’s physical and intellectual property.”
This story has been updated with a statement from Arizona Senate President Karen Fann.
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CNN’s Devan Cole contributed to this report.
