There’s apparently a phony copy of the final report from the sham Arizona “audit” floating around that advises lawmakers not to certify the 2020 election.
Unfortunately, the state’s governor already did so — nearly 10 months ago.
The inexperienced, politically biased “auditors” of Maricopa County’s 2020 election results announced in a final report that, yes, Joe Biden won the election. Then, they spent the majority of their report flagging easily explained “anomalies” to provide grist for Trump and others’ quest to undermine confidence in the democratic process.
But that apparently wasn’t enough material for some Big Liars, who’ve begun circulating, knowingly or not, a fake report that claims the entire election should be trashed — a development Cyber Ninja’s spokesperson warned the media about Tuesday.
The fake report asserts that based on its findings, “the election should not be certified, and the reported results are not reliable.”
“Source confirms this is the REAL #AZ #audit report being censured in #Arizona. The election should not be certified,” Matthew DePerno, a candidate for Michigan attorney general who for months pushed conspiracy theories about the vote totals out of Antrim County, Michigan, tweeted on Friday.
Trump endorsed DePerno’s candidacy earlier this month. Doug Logan, the lead auditor in Arizona, was a listed “expert” of DePerno’s in a lawsuit over Antrim County’s results that was dismissed in May.
But on Tuesday, a spokesperson for Logan’s company Cyber Ninjas, Rod Thompson, said in an emailed statement that “There is a false version of the Executive Summary of the Maricopa County Forensic Election Audit report that is circulating.”
“This false version claims to be an earlier version of the Cyber Ninjas Executive Summary, but because of supposed threats from the Senate, it was not used,” Thompson said. “This is absolutely false.”
“Specifically, this false version of the Executive Summary states, ‘the election should not be certified,'” he explained.
Thompson linked to a document on Scribd containing the fake report, which the website data showed was uploaded by Jim Hoft, founder of the popular conspiracy theory website Gateway Pundit.
“The exact origins to the Executive Summary found at the following scribd link are unknown,” Thompson said. “But it was not written by Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan, nor was it in any version that was ever sent or shown to the Senate for review.”
Gateway Pundit had multiple live articles up Tuesday referring to the fake report.
“For some reason, this did not make any headlines!” one of the articles exclaimed.
Another Gateway Pundit article took the Republican establishment to task for not circulating the fake report.
“The GOP webpage DID NOT have a single mention of the explosive findings!” the story raged, adding: “At some point, you start to see that these people are working for the other side!”
Neither DePerno nor Gateway Pundit returned TPM’s request for comment.
The Arizona Capitol Times first reported on the fake audit report Monday after Gateway Pundit began citing the document.
“This is a fake document,” Senate audit liaison and former Arizona GOP chair Randy Pullen told the Capitol Times. “There was never a discussion about decertifying.”
