An observer watches as contractors working for cyber ninjas hired by the Arizona State Senate examine and count ballots for the 2020 general election at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum on May 8, 2021 in Phoenix, Arizona.
Courtney Pedroza | The Washington Post | Getty Images
The private company, which is running a partisan and much-criticized election test in Arizona, will not have a full report of its results until Monday, in part because its CEO and two others tested positive for Covid, said the state Republicans who discontinued the company . Cyber ninjas.
The Florida-based company, which had no prior electoral review experience and whose owner tweeted support for pro-Trump election conspiracies, will instead only send “part of the draft report” on time to President Karen Fann, according to an Arizona Senate press release.
“The team expected to have the full draft ready for the Senate today, but unfortunately Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan and two other members of the five-person audit team tested positive for COVID-19 and are quite ill,” said Fanns Explanation.
“In addition to the illnesses, the Senate did not receive the pictures of the ballot envelopes from Maricopa County until Thursday and is hoping to have them analyzed as soon as possible to include these results in the final report,” it said.
The delay was announced after two House Democrats accused cyber ninjas of refusing to comply with a Congressional investigation into the company.
House Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney, DN.Y., and Civil Rights Subcommittee Chair Jamie Raskin, D-Md., Have raised concerns about the company’s lack of experience, its “sloppy and insecure” audit practices, which Reportedly, “the integrity of the ballot papers” and an apparent interest in promoting the false conspiracy theory that the 2020 elections were rigged against former President Donald Trump.
They also found that several pro-Trump dark money groups raised millions of dollars to fund the exam.
In a letter dated Sunday to Cyber Ninjas CEO Douglas Logan, Democrats said they “will be forced to consider other steps to achieve compliance” when the company conducts its investigation “Still disabled”.
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Democrats, including Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, have condemned Republicans in the Senate for adopting false conspiracy theories about a rigged election that Trump widely spread before and after his loss to President Joe Biden.
However, election experts also said the results of the test should not be trusted and cited a number of concerns about the investigators’ methodology and motivations.
In mid-July, Maloney and Raskin announced to Logan that they were collecting records as part of a review of whether his company’s actions were aimed at “canceling the result of a free and fair election for the benefit of the party.”
They asked for these documents by July 28th, which contained information about who is paying for the effort.
But after Cyber Ninjas received an extension to submit materials through August 9, “they sent a letter contradicting all nine of the committee’s motions,” said Maloney and Raskin in the letter shared Monday.
“Cyber ninjas failed to provide key documents in response to the committee’s inquiries,” they said, including their communications with Trump, the Arizona State Senate, and “the dark money partisan groups that sponsored this review.”
A contractor who works for Cyber Ninjas and has been hired by the Arizona State Senate transports ballots from the 2020 general election at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum on May 1, 2021 in Phoenix, Arizona.
Courtney Pedroza | Getty Images
The company turned on the grounds that the legislator’s requirements were “vague”, “inadequate” or “overwhelmed”. But Democrats said none of these objections offered “a legitimate justification to obstruct the committee’s investigation”.
Maloney and Raskin also responded to repeated allegations by cyber ninjas that the documents were legal secret, calling those allegations “patent invalid” and “based on a fundamental misunderstanding by the authorities of Congress.”
Cyber Ninjas did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request to comment on the letter.
Arizona county officials who conducted handcounting tests in the days following the November 3 election found no inconsistencies or irregularities in many counties.
But in March, Arizona Senate Republicans hired cyber ninjas and two other firms to do their own review of the 2.1 million votes cast in Maricopa County, claiming the additional analysis would “validate every area of the voting process to get the.” Integrity of Voting. “
Biden beat Trump in Maricopa, the most populous county in the state, by more than 45,000 votes. Biden beat Trump in the state with a total of around 10,000 votes.
The Democrats told Logan that they would give cyber ninjas an additional extension so that they can voluntarily share the requested documents until August 27th.
“If your company, pretending to be lawful in the public interest, continues to obstruct the committee’s investigation, the committee will be forced to consider other steps to achieve compliance,” it said To write.
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