PHOENIX, AZ – Arizona state Senator Wendy Rogers (R) on Tuesday responded to an online video tweeted by state Attorney General Mark Brnovich, imploring him to “arrest those who stole our elections and deleted the election data” in regards to the results of the 2020 Presidential election.
AG Brnovich – who is currently running for a seat on the U.S. Senate – had posted a message on twitter where he vowed to “keep fighting” against policies of the Biden Administration that he claimed were disadvantageous to Arizona residents.
However, Senator Rogers responded to the tweet, taking exception that Brnovich had not discussed “election integrity” in his video.
“The elephant in the room is #ElectionIntegrity,” Rogers said. “This is a single issue state and a single issue race for U.S. Senate. Dominate that issue, and you win. How do you dominate? Arrest those who stole our elections and deleted the election data.”
Rogers was referring to the results of a months-long, GOP-backed forensic audit of Maricopa County – the state’s most populous – following allegations of fraud in the 2020 election that some say resulted in the loss of former President Donald Trump to challenger Joe Biden.
Ultimately, the companies running the audit confirmed that Biden had indeed defeated Trump by the number of ballots cast, but members of the state’s GOP noted that the report indicated that a significant number of votes were potentially illegally cast and have demanded the AG to conduct an investigation. Some news outlets have denied this is the case.
Rogers’ claim that individuals “deleted the election data” has been denied by Republican-led Maricopa County election officials, who tweeted that the data in question was never deleted; only moved, archived, and currently readily available if anyone wishes to now review it.
“Maricopa County strongly denies claims that @maricopavote staff intentionally deleted data,” they said. “As we’ve stated, staff were conducting the March election & compiling info required to comply w/ Senate subpoena. We have backups for all Nov. data & those archives were never subpoenaed.”
During a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on October 7, 2021, Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers and the boards vice chairman, Bill Gates, admitted that while they did intentionally delete certain election data to route it onto an archive file, that archives of the county records specifically were not subpoenaed, so they did not deliver them.
Former Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett who acted as the Senate’s Audit Liaison said the excuse was “frankly laughable” in response to the subpoena.
I find it frankly laughable to suggest a county in response to a subpoena, could say we will delete files from the hard drives and the materials that we give to the auditors, because we have those files archived, on data that we did not give to the auditors, when the subpoena said to turn over all records related to the election.
— Ken Bennett Senate Audit Liaison
Bronovich said that his office’s Election Integrity Unit (EIU) has asked the Arizona Senate to provide supporting documents from the audit report and asked Maricopa County to preserve all documents and data related to the 2020 election.
“The report raises some serious questions regarding the 2020 election,” his statement said. “Arizonans can be assured our office will conduct a thorough review of the information we receive.”
— Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich
Many other states have also cited the Arizona audit to bring cause for more audits in other states throughout the U.S.
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