Understanding how this all happened requires a little backtracking. The ex-POTUS’s ugly threats and intimidation against Jack Smith, Fani Willis, and Judge Chutkan will… well, did it.Īnd for the long parade of Trump-aligned GOP legislators who made the pilgrimage to Arizona to observe the audit, the lesson is straightforward: They might be able to pull off “audits” in their states, too. The Senate president and Senate Judiciary chairman just. Or what practical issues might arise if the government lost possession of the ballots and related election equipment. To this day, there’s never been an actual vote by anyone in the Arizona state government on this so-called “audit.” There was never any discussion by a legislative body about protecting the security (and privacy) of those ballots. And voila-the OAN mouthpieces skittered off to Phoenix to both fundraise off of, and provide live coverage about, the ongoing debacle. Once they got the ballots, they handed them off to the Cyber Ninjas for a “forensic audit” and then rented out the Veteran’s Memorial Coliseum. But it has been surprisingly easy for a couple of his Republican allies to seize 2.1 million ballots from Arizona’s most populous county to keep his conspiracy theory machine pumping.Īll they needed to do was have the Arizona GOP Senate president and the GOP Senate Judiciary chairman send a subpoena for them. Donald Trump wasn’t able to use his big lie to overturn the 2020 election through local officials, the courts, or Congress.

Arizona audit findings oan