Previously hidden Cyber Ninjas texts revealed in Republic records lawsuit over 'audit'
As is often the case, those who squeal the loudest and make the most noise about a grievance are often perpetrators of whatever it is they are squealing about. Since he first began running for President, Trump squealed and whined about "rigged" elections. There's a good reason for that. In his business, and in his politics, Trump has only been able to survive by rigging things his way. His business "empire" has turned out to be mostly a mirage, phony claims, exaggerated resources and scams to make it appear as if there's real wealth there, instead of massive debt, much of which never gets paid back.
He planted the idea in the minds of his mindless supporters--there's an oxymoron for you--that Hillary Clinton would cheat to get elected. Rigged elections are his ongoing theme. He never offers proof, just makes statements and expects reporters to act like he's uncovered some scandal in reporting what he said. But, as more and more evidence comes to light, the reality is that Republicans, especially connected to Trump, have indeed laid out strategies to rig elections in their favor. They've looked at trying to scam vote counting machines and voting equipment, they've resorted to intimidation of poll workers and they have attempted to cover it all up by making accusations against the Democrats.
After-the-Fact Scams in Arizona and Georgia
The Trump campaign in particular was stung by the reality that population growth and shift in Arizona and Georgia caught them off guard in 2020, and gave narrow wins to Joe Biden in states that were considered reliably Republican. So of course, legislatures in those states wanted to be absolutely sure, since the margins were less than 15,000 votes in both cases. Audits found elections in both states were conducted correctly and accurately and that the vote totals reflected the will of the voters.
It should have been a clue when the normally frugal state legislature in Arizona listened to their then-Senate president Karen Fann, a Trumpie nut job election denier, and decided to spend money on a third audit, focused not on the entire state, but on Maricopa County, which had flipped blue in 2020 and where the margin of victory for Biden was found. Why, after two professional election audits had come up with the identical results and vote totals, was a third audit, of Maricopa County alone, necessary? Apparently, it was necessary in order for an outside group to get their hands on voting machines and ballots and change enough votes, more than 40,000 in Maricopa County, to give Trump the win.
The whole thing turned into a comedy of errors. The county elections board, suspicious from the very start, verified the vote totals from the two audits, handed it over to the secretary of state who when signed off and gave it to the state's Republican governor, Doug Ducey, a semi-Trumpie conservative, who certified the totals before the Cyber Ninjas got their hands on the ballots and equipment. So their audit would prove to be moot before it ever got off the ground.
But the Ninjas, as tech savvy as they claimed to be, with equipment they claimed could detect "bamboo fibers" to prove ballots had come from China, had to go back to the election board multiple times to figure out how to read voter registration lists, how to find signatures to verify mail-in ballots, how to operate the counting machines for the samples they wanted to run. The GPS maps they were using were ten years old, outdated and useless in a county that is one of the fastest growing in the country. At one point, an outside observer noted that the room in the old coliseum where they were working was scattered with open ballot boxes, ballots strewn over tables and floors, almost intentional in its chaos and confusion.
The state senate hadn't authorized much frivolous spending of taxpayer dollars, so Logan was left to raise money on his own for the Ninja job in Maricopa County. Apparently, they decided that since Fann wasn't going to get the Senate to fork over any more money, they were not going to provide her with the result that she wanted. They never managed to complete their report, and when asked to provide a count, claimed to have discovered that, surprise, surprise, it was off by a few hundred votes, but in Biden's favor. No written report was ever produced, since Logan didn't raise the kind of money he needed to cover lawsuits that ate up the $6 million or so he claims to have collected.
This disaster, perpetrated by the GOP, served one good purpose. The publicity it generated for Republicans was so bad, that Democrats won every statewide office in 2022 except superintendent of public instruction. Katie Hobbs, who was the secretary of state at the time, and who went out of her way to protect the property of the state of Arizona from thievery, won a narrow victory for Governor.
The same kinds of intimidation and scamming were used in Georgia, where Trump and his cronies are now charged, and some of them have decided to come clean and plead to lesser charges in order to avoid going to prison for trying to commit voter fraud. The biggest problem they had here, aside from law enforcement and county officials protecting the integrity of their election and tabulation process from prying eyes and hands, was the intimidation and threats against Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, who refused to give access to what the Trump campaign needed to mess with votes. They did succeed in Coffee County, where Missy Hampton, the election supervisor, caved into the intimidation and gave access to the voting machines so they could change the totals.
This Will Happen Again
The Cyber Ninja affair in Arizona had a disastrous outcome for Republicans. In spite of severe gerrymandering on the state level, they still lost ground. Karen Fann, the former senate president, was a casualty of her own fraud attempt, choosing not to run to protect her seat for the GOP, which would almost certainly have flipped if she'd run again. Thank goodness she's gone, though, unfortunately, the district elected another ballot-restricting election denying conspiracy theorist. Idiocy succeeds itself in Arizona, more often than most people realize.
But there are some facts out on the table that we must acknowledge will open the door to right wing attempts to commit fraud and steal elections in 2024. You can count on it.
Thanks to some of the brilliant timing of all of this, It does not appear that the Justice Department or the court system will move fast enough to render Trump ineligible to run again, based on the constitution, nor does it look like he will be headed to prison in time. It appears they're trying, but there's no guarantee. Maybe that will happen, but if he's on the ballot, we can count on massive cheating attempts. They know he cannot win an honest and fair election. So in as many places as they can get their hands on voting and counting equipment, they will. And if they're not being closely watched, there will be massive voter fraud.
This is not an easy thing to do. Not anywhere near as easy as Trump has made it out to be in his claims of the other side doing it. But it can be done, and it is certain that these people will give it a try. There are election officials in many places who are willing to commit fraud and go to prison and risk getting caught to make sure the orange headed buffoon goes back to the White House.
We can stop it by turning out in numbers large enough to make it impossible to commit fraud. And we can stop it by exposing the perpetrators when we know who they are and can see what's going on. We need an army of election help. We need plenty of Ruby Freemans and Shaye Mosses.
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