Legal counsel for the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors sent a “litigation hold and preservation notice” letter to Arizona State Senate President Karen Fann on Friday.
Maricopa County Attorney Allister Adel wrote:
Your May 13, 2021 letter to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers, which was published widely, falsely claimed, “[w]e have recently discovered that the entire ‘Database’ directory from the D drive of the machine ‘EMSPrimary’ has been deleted. This removes election related details that appear to have been covered by the subpoena…[t]his suggests that the main database for all election related data for the November 2020 General Election has been removed.”
Soon after, the Senate Audit’s twitter account posted, “Breaking Update: Maricopa County deleted a directory full of election databases from the 2020 election databases from the 2020 election cycle days before the election equipment was delivered to the audit: This is spoliation of evidence!”
“Our clients delivered the server exactly as it was kept by the Maricopa County Elections Department. Nothing was deleted, or added, from the server when we prepared it to be sent to the Senate pursuant to the Senate’s subpoena,” Adel continued:
Because of the wrongful accusations that the County destroyed evidence, the County or its elected officers may now be subject to, or have, legal claims. Likewise, we have reason to believe this audit is not being done in accordance with Arizona law. Accordingly, as set forth in detail below, you must preserve all documents related to your “audit”, including any and all communications between you and any other member of the Senate or their staffs, and also any communications between you and your agents, including, but not limited to, Ken Bennett, Cyber Ninjas, CyFir, Wake TSI, and those firms’ various owners, officers, employees, agents, subcontractors, or volunteers that they utilized in the conduct or furtherance of the “audit” you and they are conducting.
You must give this litigation hold letter to all of your agents, contractors, volunteers, or anyone else who is designated, retained, employed, or otherwise utilized by you or the Arizona Senate to participate in the “audit” being conducted of Maricopa County’s election equipment and ballots. This includes whoever operates the “audit’s” Twitter account. All those persons are likewise subject to this litigation hold letter.
“Imagine how much taxpayer money is being wasted on trying to stop the audit. Why not sue after the audit is done when you have results?,” Arizona State Senator Warren Peterson (R-12] responded via Twitter in a succinct statement.
Imagine how much taxpayayer money is being wasted on trying to stop the audit. Why not sue after the audit is done when you have results? #AzAudit
— Warren Petersen (@votewarren) May 23, 2021
On Monday, the Arizona State Senate audit of the Maricopa County election results resumed after a one week hiatus.
The audit started back up this morning and things are running smoothly with 28 tables working!
— Maricopa Arizona Audit (@ArizonaAudit) May 24, 2021
Friday’s letter from Maricopa County to the Arizona State Senate is the latest volley in the ongoing battle between those two entities over the forensic audit of Maricopa County’s 2020 election results being conducted by the State Senate.
As Breitbart News reported:
The audit of Maricopa County’s November 2020 election results ordered by the Arizona State Senate began on April 23 and . . . has been vigorously resisted by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and election officials, all of whom refused to attend a hearing to which they were invited [in a May 13 letter] and asked to address election audit issues on Tuesday [May 18] presided over by Arizona State Senate President Karen Fann. . .
The meeting was held on Tuesday, despite the failure of any Maricopa County officials to attend.
“We hoped that this meeting would have been a little bit different today, because we had so many questions, you had questions. Unfortunately, the [Maricopa County] Board of Supervisors did not want to join us,” Arizona State Senate President Karen Fann said to open the meeting at the Arizona State Capital on Tuesday.
Sources familiar with the audit tell Breitbart News they expect it to continue into August, and possibly into September or October.
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