Nice frame by the Hill: Firm behind Arizona audit claims no data was 'destroyed' (but it still needed to be recovered)

Tal Axelrod
The HIll
Tue, 18 May 2021 17:16 UTC

© CNN/YouTube

The floor of the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Maricopa County, where the audit is being live-streamed.

A firm that is conducting a controversial election audit in Arizona confirmed Tuesday that no data has been destroyed, contradicting some Republicans' claims that officials had deleted information regarding the vote tally in Maricopa County.

Comment: Notice how right off the bat, The Hill skates over the fact that the files had been deleted and required recovery. Which implies that there was something to hide.

Ben Cotton, founder of CyFIR LLC, which is working on the audit, said he had retrieved all the data he needs from Arizona's most populous county, which President Biden won in November. The remark came a day after county officials said auditors could not find the information because they did not know where it was located.

"I have the information I need from the recovery efforts of the data," Cotton told state senators at a livestreamed hearing.

The reversal marks a setback for former President Trump and his allies, who had seized on the claims of deleted data to suggest there were deeper issues in Arizona's tally.

"The entire Database of Maricopa County in Arizona has been DELETED! This is illegal and the Arizona State Senate, who is leading the Forensic Audit, is up in arms," Trump said in a statement Saturday. "The story is only getting bigger and at some point it will be impossible for the weak and/or corrupt media not to cover."

Biden was the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Arizona since 1996.

Cotton's confirmation that he has all of the data he needs is the latest development in an audit that has split open the state GOP.

The audit is being controlled by Republicans in the state Senate, but some in the GOP have grumbled over the partisan direction in which they've taken the count.

Lawmakers in the state legislature have said the audit is needed to address unfounded claims of election irregularities, but local officials have said the count will cast doubts on election integrity moving forward.

"None of this is inspiring confidence. None of this will cause our citizens to trust elections. In fact, it is having the opposite result," the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which is made up of four Republicans and one Democrat, wrote to Arizona's Republican state Senate President Karen Fann Monday.

"It is time to end this," the board wrote. "For the good of the Senate, for the good of the Country and for the good of the Democratic institutions that define us as Americans."

Comment: Translation: "Please, please, let us bail before they find the really incriminating stuff."

Comment: Non-establishment reporting from The Gateway Pundit on Maricopa County Audit Team admitting files were deleted:

Last week, the Gateway Pundit reported about the emergency meeting that was called by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, after the County was reportedly unable to provide passwords to the auditors performing an audit of the county's 2020 Election results. They also did not provide access to the routers which were requested in the audit as well.

On Wednesday afternoon, it was discovered that "the entire database" showing the "Results Tally and Reporting" for the 2020 election had been deleted from the Maricopa County voting machines.

Also, discrepancies were found between the number of ballots and the batch reports:

The auditors have been reporting 5-15 percent discrepancies across many boxes, with the number consistently growing. Joe Biden supposedly won the county by only 2.2 percent, according to the official results.

Political strategist Boris Epshteyn said on an appearance on Steve Bannon's War Room show that the discrepancies may actually be as high as 17.5 percent — making it likely that "Biden did not win Arizona."

AZ State Senate questions Maricopa County about deleted election data bases