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Arizona Election
Auditors Include
Those Who Touted
Voting Fraud. |
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Here Are The Key
Players |
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Jen Fifield and
Andrew Oxford |
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Published 5:28 p.m.
MT May 4, 2021 |
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More is
emerging by the day about who has access to Maricopa County
voters' ballots and private information as Arizona Senate
contractors attempt to audit the November presidential election. |
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Arizona Senate
Republicans got the ballots, voting machines and voter
information from the county through a court order to do the
audit, but handed it all over to private contractors who have
declined to name or have failed to be specific about everyone
who has access to the information and materials and who is
paying for the work. |
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Arizona
journalists have asked Cyber Ninjas, the Senate's main
contractor, for more information about the people counting the
ballots, and have scoured the company's publicly released
documents for details about who has access to the voting
machines and voter data, but have been unable to confirm the
identity of everyone involved. |
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The Arizona
Republic has sought to piece together the main players involved
or who have claimed some level of involvement in the audit,
including a handful who have connections to the Stop the Steal
movement or who echoed claims of election fraud.
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This article
may update as we learn more. |
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Senate
President Karen Fann |
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Senate
President Karen Fann and Senate Republicans issued subpoenas to
obtain the county's general election ballots, voter information
and voting machines, but they've left carrying out the audit to
private contractors.
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Still, the
Senate has liability for renting the Arizona Veterans Memorial
Coliseum and for the voter information and machines it obtained
in a court order. |
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Fann appointed
Ken Bennett to serve as the Senate’s liaison to the contractors.
Fann told The Republic early on in the audit that Bennett was in
charge of monitoring the audit, as she continues to work at the
state Capitol as lawmakers finalize the state budget. |
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Fann has said
the audit is not meant to attempt to overturn the general
election results, but to find areas where the state can improve
its voting process. |
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Fann said last
week that she remains confident in the audit despite concerns
raised about the auditors’ processes and transparency, including
a lawsuit brought by the Arizona Democratic Party and Maricopa
County Supervisor Steve Gallardo.
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She said the
auditors will have to prove their case if they find
"irregularities." |
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Some Republican
senators have made up their minds that there was fraud in the
Nov. 3 election. A website to donate to the campaign of state
Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, blares an "expose the election
fraud” message and features a photo of the recount. Rogers
refers to President Joe Biden as “Fraudulent Joe Biden" in
fundraising emails to supporters. |
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Ken Bennett |
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Ken Bennett, a
familiar figure in the state's Republican political circles, has
been at the coliseum daily since the recount began on April 23
as the liaison between the Senate and the contractors conducting
the audit. |
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The Arizona
native served as Senate president in the early 2000s and later
as secretary of state. |
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Bennett has
overseen numerous state elections, and is no stranger to
conspiracy theories. As secretary of state in 2012, he
threatened to keep Barack Obama off the ballot unless Hawaii
verified he was born in the United States. He explained the move
at the time as trying to quell a concern brought by a
constituent. |
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He has used
similar logic during the audit, saying auditors’ search for
watermarks on the ballots could help dispel conspiracy theories
that have sprouted around that debunked claim. |
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Bennett said he
tried to make the audit more bipartisan by asking the state
Democratic Party to offer up someone to serve alongside him. The
party refused, he said. |
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Bennett has
been asking questions of the private contractors since before
the audit began. He said he knew from the start that the
$150,000 the Senate committed for the audit was not enough to
cover costs. |
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On the first
day of the audit, as contractors rushed to finalize processes,
Bennett was there, asking how they would provide proper chain of
custody to keep ballots secure, and other questions. |
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While Bennett
can question the auditors, he has been clear from the start that
he is not in charge. |
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Doug Logan |
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Doug Logan runs
Cyber Ninjas, the small Florida-based cybersecurity company
hired by the Senate to run the audit and hire subcontractors. |
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Logan plays a
key role in how the audit is carried out, as he appeared to make
rule and procedural changes on the first day of the hand count.
When The Republic raised concerns about blue pens on the
counting floor before the counting of actual ballots got
underway that first day, Logan checked into it and had the pens
replaced with green ones. |
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Cyber Ninjas
does not have any known experience running election audits.
Asked about its experience, company officials said in a
statement last week that it is the coordinating firm of four
companies conducting components of the audit, and each company
has election experience in the area it is working. |
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The company
statement also said Cyber Ninjas was involved in an election
audit in Georgia. It did not provide specifics. |
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How Logan wound
up leading Arizona's audit is unclear. He didn’t submit a formal
offer to Fann, according to the Arizona Capitol Times, and Fann
passed up an experienced auditing company when selecting Logan. |
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Fann had said
she spent months looking for the best people to run the audit.
Knowing that the people in charge had to have knowledge of
topics such as election auditing, voting machines and
cybersecurity, Fann said she thought it would be best for a main
contractor to assemble a team of subcontractors. |
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The company’s
ninja-themed website says it specializes in "all areas of
application security, ranging from your traditional web
application to mobile or thick client applications.” That
includes ethical hacking, training and general consulting. |
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In a short
biography for a cybersecurity conference, Logan said that he has
worked in technology for more than 15 years “including roles in
development, product management, application penetration
testing, consulting and training.” |
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Logan had
posted a litany of unsubstantiated allegations about fraud in
the general election to a Twitter account, which is now deleted. |
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"I’m tired of
hearing people say there was no fraud. It happened, it’s real,
and people better get wise fast," said one post he shared from
another Twitter user in late 2020. |
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Logan was
involved in efforts to try to prove there was election fraud in
Antrim County, Michigan, according to an Antrim County court
document. He was part of a team that examined the county’s
voting machines and claimed in a report that they found errors
designed to create fraud. State and county officials there said
the report was biased and identified a slew of problems with the
team's analysis. |
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John Brakey |
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John Brakey, an
election transparency activist from Tucson who sued state and
Maricopa County election officials in 2016 with claims of
election fraud, is among the volunteer observers at the
coliseum. |
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Brakey lost his
court fight with Republican Helen Purcell, who was the county
recorder in charge of the presidential preference election in
2016, when some voters waited in lines at polling places for
five hours or more. |
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Brakey runs
Audit USA, a nonprofit focused on election fairness. He refers
to himself as a progressive Democrat and says that he works with
both sides of the aisle to advocate for fair and transparent
elections. |
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Brakey said he
is volunteering every day of the audit for multiple shifts,
attempting to oversee the procedures and provide advice. |
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Brakey has
stood at Bennett’s side during two news conferences, and said he
has pushed for more transparency and media access to the audit. |
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As the audit
got underway, on the first day of the hand count at least,
Bennett and Logan both consulted with Brakey on proper election
audit protocol. |
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Brakey told The
Republic he advocates for governments to save and publish
scanned ballot images to provide more election transparency. |
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He said this is
an opportunity to improve election procedures and to advocate
for ballot images, which cannot be connected back to voters, to
be published online so the public can do its own review. |
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He said on
Monday that he became involved because he understands the
importance of this audit and "you can't make change unless you
are sitting at the table." |
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Brakey told The
Republic he has threatened to leave a few times as he has been
unhappy with the procedures. But he said he is getting results,
and that he will stick around as long as he can do that. |
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Bryan Blehm |
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Numerous
attorneys are involved in defending the audit, but outside the
courtroom, attorney Bryan Blehm often has been seen wandering
the coliseum floor during the hand recount and talking to the
contractors.
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He is with
Phoenix-based Blehm Law, a general practice law firm, and
represents Cyber Ninjas in the lawsuit that the state Democratic
Party filed to try to stop the audit. |
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Gene Kern |
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Gene Kern is
the co-founder and executive vice president of Wake Technology
Inc., a Pennsylvania-based IT company that Cyber Ninjas hired to
run the hand count. |
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On the first
day of the hand count, Kern appeared to have the most say and
knowledge about the procedures that the auditors were using to
count ballots. |
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Kern's LinkedIn
page says he has nearly 40 years of experience and he provides
services in project management, IT consulting, computer
networking, network support, cybersecurity and other fields. |
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Wake TSI’s
website does not list elections or audits among the services it
provides. The site does list help desk and IT service
management, managed IT, interim and virtual executives,
productivity and cybersecurity. |
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The Senate has
said Wake employees performed hand-count audits in Fulton
County, Pennsylvania, and in New Mexico, and have assisted in
election fraud investigations since the 1990s. The Republic was
able to confirm that the company performed a hand count in
Fulton County, but was unable to confirm that it did a hand
count in New Mexico. |
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Anthony Kern |
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Gene Kern's
firm is responsible for hiring people to recount the ballots.
Most of the people doing this task are not public figures,
although one stands out: former state Rep. Anthony Kern. |
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The two men are
unrelated, Anthony Kern said. |
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Anthony Kern, a
Stop the Steal backer, has been spotted on several days counting
ballots. It is unclear if he is being paid and how many shifts
he is working. |
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“Very exciting
to be involved in Arizona's massive and historic election audit
which begins today. All of us should want fair and honest
elections in our great State! The nation is watching Arizona!”
he tweeted. |
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Then-state
lawmaker Kern, a Glendale Republican, and state Rep. Mark
Finchem, R-Oro Valley, were near the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Kern lost his reelection bid for the Arizona House of
Representatives in November and his term expired on Jan. 10. |
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The pair both
signed a "joint resolution" with many Republican lawmakers at
the state Capitol arguing that Congress should not accept
Arizona's electoral college votes, and their trip to Washington,
D.C., appeared to be an extension of that campaign. |
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Finchem and
Kern both have said they were outside the Capitol when rioters
disrupted the certification of the presidential election. And
both have denied any wrongdoing. |
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Kern declined
to comment when asked why he got involved in the recount and
what his experience was like on the first day of counting. |
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Arizona
Rangers |
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The Arizona
Rangers are the most visible security patrols at the coliseum. |
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The uniformed
law enforcement auxiliary nonprofit organization assists law
enforcement agencies with tasks such as event security and
personal security for government officials. |
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The Rangers are
assisting "law enforcement agencies that are on site" at the
coliseum and providing supplemental security, but are not
involved in the ballot recount itself, according to Col. Mike
Droll, Arizona Rangers' state commander. |
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The Rangers
launched a fundraising campaign on GoFundMe on April 23. The
campaign does not say that funds raised will go toward the
support of the audit. As of Monday, the campaign had raised more
than $170,000. |
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"We were
surprised by the volume of organic public donations we recently
received," said Bill Nordbrock, a spokesperson for the
organization. "Any donations we receive allow us to better serve
the communities, and youth initiatives in Arizona." |
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The rangers are
unpaid volunteers who cover most of their own expenses for
training, equipment and travel, Nordbrock said. |
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There are
nearly 500 rangers in 22 companies throughout the state,
according to the GoFundMe account. |
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While the
Arizona Department of Public Safety said at first it was not
involved with security for the audit, a couple of troopers have
been seen in the coliseum. |
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Liz Harris |
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Beyond recounting
ballots, the audit seeks to verify voter information and votes,
and may be relying on Liz Harris for that.
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Harris is a former
Republican state legislative candidate who started a grassroots
effort months ago in an attempt to collect evidence of
widespread voter fraud. |
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Harris has told The
Republic that more than 4,400 people have signed up to
participate in her effort to find abnormalities in voting in
Arizona, and she said her group has been knocking on voters'
doors around the state for nearly four months. |
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People have signed up
for Harris' effort through a website called itsmellsfunny.com.
Harris has shared updates about the effort on YouTube and
Facebook, and most recently has begun sharing updates about the
audit itself. |
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Harris initially told
The Republic that her group was helping with the Senate’s audit,
but she couldn’t say on what part because of a nondisclosure
agreement. Harris later said she doesn’t know what her
involvement may or may not be. |
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A Cyber Ninjas
report, laying out the scope of the audit, is not specific about
what company or who is verifying voter information. The report
says the effort will be done by a “registration and votes cast
team,” that has been doing “non-partisan canvassing” in the
state to “statistically identify voter registrations that did
not make sense, and then knock on doors to confirm if valid
voters actually lived at the stated address.”
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n a live video on
Monday, Harris said that she wanted to remind people that the
audit was not about left versus right, but "good versus evil." |
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She held up a sign
that said, "May Arizona be the first domino to fall," referring
to the effort to prove voter fraud across the country. |
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She told The Republic
that Republicans, Democrats and independents are involved in her
group. The effort "has nothing to do with 'Stop the Steal,'" she
said. |
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Harris in her
live video on Monday said that she has been talking to a man
named Bobby Piton since December. |
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Bobby Piton |
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Bobby Piton's
role or influence on the audit remains murky. |
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The financial
adviser from Illinois has made claims of election fraud in
Arizona's general election and has said he's talked with the CEO
of Cyber Ninjas in the past. Piton has said he's not actively
involved in the audit, but that he'd be sharing his analysis of
voter data with Logan.
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“If the team
wants to use it, great,” Piton said on social media. He said if
they want to use it they can, but if they don’t, he will release
his results separately. |
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"I don't know
anything about a Bobby Piton," Bennett told The Republic,
although he said he would check. |
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The Republic
also reached out to Cyber Ninjas and Piton for clarification. |
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Piton is the
founder of investment consulting firm PreActive Investments in
Illinois. He has been talking about what he sees as
irregularities in Arizona voter data since at least November.
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He joined Rudy
Giuliani and others to present election concerns to a handful of
Republican Arizona lawmakers at a downtown Phoenix hotel in late
November. Piton, at that meeting, said that his opinion, from
reviewing Arizona voter data, was that between 120,000 and
306,000 ballots were cast by “fake people.” |
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His method for
coming to that conclusion involved creating an algorithm that
separated Arizona voters into “five types of voters” based on
gender and age and performing correlation tests. |
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“It was
absolutely mind-boggling what popped out,” he said during the
November meeting. |
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Mix of fears,
rumors: Social media 'monitors' track Arizona election audit |
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He has said in
the last month on social media that he is again investigating
Arizona voter data. It’s unclear where he got the data for his
analysis. |
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Piton has said
he knows Cyber Ninjas' CEO. In an April 23 YouTube video talking
about the audit, he said, “I know Doug. I was working with Doug
in December on some things.” |
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In
the video, he comments on an Arizona Mirror article that
mentions his name and involvement. He doesn’t back down on his
claim about fake voters, although he said he called them
“phantom voters.” |
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“What I’m going
to tell you is — let’s wait and see,” he said. “I’m pretty
optimistic about my research.” |
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In
another video posted April 26, Piton said he is not formally
involved in the Arizona audit because he told Logan that he
wouldn't sign a nondisclosure agreement. |
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While in
December he was claiming his analysis already had found fraud,
in recent posts, Piton appears to backpedal about the election
results, saying that he isn’t making any claims of fraud just
yet. He says in the April 23 video that the audit team isn’t
“contesting anything.” |
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“We are just
looking at the process for how it can be better on a going
forward basis,” he said. |
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A Daily Beast
reporter called Piton recently to ask him whether he was
involved in the QAnon movement, according to his April 26
YouTube video. In that video, Piton says the reporter asked him
if he knows Ron Watkins, a conspiracy theorist who posts on
social media. Piton said he reached out to Watkins in December
when he was first getting involved in looking at voter records. |
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Piton
apparently is not doing his work in Arizona. He said in the
April 26 YouTube video that he was in Illinois, but posted on
Twitter two days before and two days after that he was working
on the data. |
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“I just
completed 12 hours working on AZ Data today,” Piton posted on
Twitter on April 24. “I had a dream back in December that AZ
changed the course of American History and that I assisted in
this process. Time will tell if either is True.” |
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Piton has
attempted to raise money for his efforts several times, on
GoFundMe and GiveSaveGo, but his accounts have been disabled. |
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Ben Cotton and
'a number of additional analysts' |
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A third aspect
of the audit is examining the county's voting machines. Ben
Cotton is the founder of CyFIR, a Virginia-based digital
security company that Cyber Ninjas hired for that work. |
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Cyber Ninjas
said in its original scope of work that the machine analysis
would be done by Cyber Ninjas, CyFIR and “a number of additional
analysts, the identities and qualifications of whom shall be
made available to (the Senate) upon request.” |
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Bennett said
that, after getting the voting machines from the county, the
analysts have gotten the data they need from the machines and
are doing the analysis off-site. |
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Cotton's
biography indicates he spent 21 years in the U.S. Army Special
Forces, and previously served as a board member at Brigham Young
University. |
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The company’s
chief executive is Andrew Ward, who spent 26 years as a partner
at PricewaterhouseCoopers, according to his biography. |
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The company
declined a request for an interview about its qualifications to
conduct the Arizona audit. |
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“By contractual
agreement, we are unable to speak with the press regarding this
topic until the audits are complete,” CyFIR Chief Product
Officer John Irvine said. |
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The company was
involved in discovering and investigating a high-profile
cyberattack on the U.S. government several years ago. |
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In 2015, the
Wall Street Journal reported Cotton’s affiliated company, CyTech
Services, discovered that a federal database was breached while
it was performing a demonstration for the U.S. Office of
Personnel Management, or OPM, which maintains employee records
and background checks for the government. It was performing the
demonstration with its software, CyFIR Enterprise. |
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Cotton told the
Journal that the company was running a diagnostic on the OPM
network and discovered malware, which OPM later said it had
previously discovered on its own. |
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CyFIR, upon the
federal government’s request, began “providing significant
incident response and forensic support to OPM related to the
2015 incident,” according to a subsequent report on the events
from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. |
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CyFIR has
continued to work with the federal government since then. |
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Patrick Byrne |
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Also outside
the coliseum, numerous groups are fundraising around the audit.
Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of overstock.com who has written a
book purporting to show how the election was rigged, is among
them. |
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Byrne launched
a nonprofit advocacy organization called The America Project
that is raising money for the audit, according to his posts on a
web app called Telegram. |
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Byrne said on
Telegram he donated $1 million to The America Project to go
toward the audit. |
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The nonprofit's
website says that it was founded to "advance freedom and
preserve the American way of life," but Byrne said on Telegram
that "every penny you give goes to fund this Maricopa audit." |
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The America
Project did not return The Republic's call for comment. |
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Christina
Bobb |
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Also raising
funds is Christina Bobb, who hosts the Weekly Briefing on One
America News Network, a right-wing cable media outlet. |
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Bobb, who
worked in former President Donald Trump's administration,
announced on Twitter on April 9 that she launched a nonprofit
advocacy organization called Voices and Votes to raise money for
the audit, saying that the audit "is crucial to know the truth
about 2020." |
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She announced
later that day that she had met her original goal of raising
$150,000 for the audit, and on April 15 announced that the
organization was making a second pledge. |
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Bobb told The
Republic that OAN is "not affiliated in any way" with her effort
to raise the money, although the network has allowed her to
mention her fundraising efforts on air. She said she launched
her effort because she knew that the $150,000 the Senate agreed
to pay Cyber Ninjas would not cover the costs of the audit. |
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"I'm curious to
know the truth about our elections," she said. "All the
weirdness that has surrounded the elections, particularly in AZ,
gives me concerns that someone is hiding something." |
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Bobb said that
the money she raises will go "to the audit, not the Senate." She
would not share how much the nonprofit has raised. |
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Asked whether
she considers herself a journalist or an advocate, Bobb said she
considers herself "neither in this instance." |
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"I am an
American who took an oath to defend the constitution, and
getting truth is part of my duty," she said, referring to an
oath she took when serving in the U.S. Marine Corps. "If the
audit says there is no fraud, great. But Americans, not just
Arizonans, must maintain our government, or we risk losing our
freedoms." |
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OAN is
providing the audit's livestream services on azaudit.org. |
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Republic
reporter Ryan Randazzo contributed to this article |
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Source
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