Arizona Senate President Karen Fann requested Maricopa County officials meet with her next week to resolve issues related to the 2020 election audit, particularly whether someone deleted a main database from the Election Management System last month.
Fann made the request in a Wednesday letter sent to Jack Sellers, chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.
“We have recently discovered that the entire ‘Database’ directory from the D drive of the machine ‘EMSPrimary’ has been deleted,” Fann wrote, claiming the missing directory is covered by the Senate’s subpoena, which allows the group to seize elections materials for the audit.
“This suggests that the main database for all election related data for the November 2020 General Election has been removed,” she added. “Can you please advise as to why these folders were deleted, and whether there are any backups that may contain the deleted folders?”
The audit team’s Twitter account, which is run by unspecified volunteers, said the team’s allegations point toward “spoliation of evidence” by county officials.
Fann requested Elections Department officials, and others privy to the matter, meet at the Arizona State Capitol on May 18 to address the EMS files along with other stated issues “without recourse to additional subpoenas or other compulsory process.”
The meeting, if parties agree to it, would be livestreamed to the public.
Former President Donald Trump, who boasted unsubstantiated claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 election and has lauded the efforts by the Republican Senate-led audit to examine 2.1 million ballots cast in the county’s election, released a statement on Thursday promoting Fann’s letter.
“A devastating letter written by Arizona Senate President Karen Fann on voting irregularities, and probably fraud, in Maricopa County during the 2020 Presidential Election. Even the database was illegally deleted after the subpoena to produce the information,” Trump said.
Other issues mentioned in Fann’s letter include concerns that several boxes containing the ballots cast in the November election were allegedly turned over by the county without tamper-evident seals, or without the ballots being sealed in bags, as well as questions about the ballot batch counts.
“The audit team has encountered a significant number of instances in which there is a disparity between the actual number of ballots contained in a batch and the total denoted on the pink report slip accompanying the batch,” Fann wrote. “In most of these instances, the total on the pink report slip is greater than the number of ballots in the batch, although there are a few instances in which the total is lower.”
At the meeting, Senate leaders intend to discuss the county’s admitted noncompliance with one of the items from the subpoena, reviewing virtual images of routers under the observation of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.
Fann has raised questions with Maricopa County officials’ previous estimate that a router inspection would cost up to $6 million, saying it “seems odd,” given the routers were disconnected from the county’s network and prepared for delivery to the Senate before objections arose. She also offered to have technicians for CyFIR, a subcontractor for the Cyber Ninjas lead audit team, go into the Maricopa County facility to review the virtual images of the routers.
Maricopa County Attorney Allister Adel has argued that providing the county’s routers “could jeopardize the security of law enforcement data,” claims echoed by Democratic Sheriff Paul Penzone.
Ballot counting continued on the audit floor on Thursday before a brief weeklong pause as high school graduation ceremonies are set to be underway at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum, where the audit is taking place.
The Arizona Exposition and State Fair Board amended an agreement on Wednesday with the facility to allow the safe storage of election materials until May 23, also extending the lease at the Coliseum until June 30 to allow more time for ballot counting.
Both the Maricopa County Elections Department and Sellers also have not issued a public response to Fann’s letter.
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The Washington Examiner contacted the Elections Department and Sellers but did not immediately receive a response.
