Grand Canyon Times

Arizona Senate Republicans have served new subpoenas to Maricopa County officials, demanding that they turn over routers, or virtual images of them, which an outside contractor insists are needed to complete a forensics audit of the results of the November 2020 elections.

News reports cited comments made by Bill Gates, a Republican member of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, at an appearance Monday night on CNN that the county had received the subpoenas. 

In addition, Fox 10 Phoenix is reporting that Senate President Karen Fann (R-Prescott) and Judiciary Chairman Warren Petersen (R-Gilbert) have for the first time subpoenaed Dominion Voting Systems Inc., which manufactured the voting machines used by the county.

The report also said that Fann and Petersen are demanding that Dominion give the auditors “administrator-level access to all tabulators used in Maricopa County.”

Fann’s office did not respond to a request for additional information related to the subpoenas.

Speaking at a July 15 update hearing on the audit, Doug Logan, president of Cyber Ninjas, the lead contractor in the audit, said he needed the routers and other election-related materials, held by the county in order to complete the audit.

Ben Cotton, head of digital security firm CyFIR, involved in the audit, said at the hearing that the routers will help clarify vulnerabilities in the county’s digital election system.

The routers were included in the first round of subpoenas issued by the Senate but were never turned over.

“We need to answer questions so that voters have solid, safe and secure ballots,” Fann said at the hearing. “Don’t know why the county has fought this so hard.”

Former President Donald Trump mentioned routers numerous times during a Saturday night speech in Tucson, where he continued to falsely claim that he had won the 2020 election. He was the first GOP presidential candidate to lose Arizona since 1996.

Maricopa County officials argue that that the routers contain sensitive police information, and have said other information including health data and Social Security numbers, would also be placed at risk if they turned the routers over.

The subpoenas also demand that the county turn over the envelopes from all mail-in ballots or images of them, traffic logs, detailed voter-registration records with change histories, and records related security breaches of election systems – all additional items that Logan and Cotton insisted at the hearing that they needed to complete the audit.