UPDATE (6:32 p.m.) Following a pause, Arizona’s election audit is now expected to resume.
The Arizona Mirror reported that Democrats who had sued to stall it refused to post a $1 million bond to cover the expenses that the state would incur from having to re-secure the ballots and machinery over the weekend. Questions also had arisen about the cost of leasing of Phoenix’s Veterans Memorial Coliseum.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Christopher Coury said that failing to meet the contingency, the audit was back on.
UPDATE (5 p.m.): Democrats sent a legion of high-priced lawyers to launch a barrage of stall-tactics after Arizona began its forensic audit on Friday.
They succeeded in securing a judge-ordered injunction citing what they claimed were “security” issues, the Gateway Pundit reported. Barring further setbacks, the audit is scheduled to resume at noon on Monday.
What do they have to hide?
— Viper09 (@LeroyJe63726869) April 23, 2021
The absurdity of their obstruction effort prompted former president Donald Trump to issue a lengthy statement.
“The Democrats, upon hearing the news of the Court Order, have sent 73 lawyers to Arizona in an effort to stop this recount and full transparency because THEY KNOW WHAT THEY DID!,” Trump said.
Original story below:
The Arizona Democratic Party filed a last-minute lawsuit on Thursday to stop a state Senate audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County just one day before it was set to begin.
The motion, filed on Thursday, requests a temporary restraining order, arguing that the review of the county’s voting machines and 2.1 million cast ballots is a violation of state law.
“The sole reason for this lawsuit and injunctions is to protect the sanctity of the ballots and more importantly to preserve voters’ privacy from a sham audit that has been corrupted by agitators and conspiracy theorists,” Maricopa County Supervisor Steve Gallardo, who supports the Democrats’ lawsuit, said in a statement.
“This corrupted process will not be transparent,” he added. “Dark money influencers have hand-picked the folks to observe and witness the ‘audit’ that will be conducted by an uncertified and unqualified group.”
Arizona Senate Democrats agreed with Gallardo and claimed Republicans’ audit “is no more than a temper tantrum from those still upset that they lost the election.”
It’s just the latest stall-tactic that Maricopa County has used to prevent Arizona Republicans from conducting an audit.
Supervisors first tried to challenge the Senate GOP subpoena in court, but a lower judge upheld it.
The county didn’t try to appeal the ruling, but then announced it would not allow the Senate-led audit to be conducted on county property.
“There is no agreement regarding performing the audit at Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center (‘MCTEC’) and the request to perform any audit, recount or other related activities at MCTEC is beyond the scope of the subpoenas issued,” the county’s attorney, Stephen Tully, said in a statement.
The audit, which was expected to go on for weeks, was slated to begin on Friday at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix.
The transportation of the election materials began earlier this week.
