Arizona GOP Chair Dr Kelli Ward and State Senator Warren Petersen have called on the state’s Attorney General Mark Brnovich to take action following the release of the Maricopa County forensic audit.
As National File reported, multiple election integrity issues and ballot errors were discovered in the forensic audit of Maricopa County’s 2020 election, with the findings revealed to the Arizona Senate on Friday. Severe doubts were raised regarding the integrity of the 2020 election leading to mass calls to decertify the election results.
Ultimately, the information presented during the audit led legislators, candidates, and Republicans across the country to call for Arizona to begin the process of decertifying its election, while Senate President Karen Fann – who has thus far stopped short at acknowledging calls to decertify – is instead suggesting Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich should become involved. (READ MORE: Trump Joins Call To Decertify Arizona’s 2020 Election Results)
Speaking at the end of hearing, which included slides from former Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett, who argued that various state laws had been broken by Maricopa County during the election, State Senator Warren Petersen called on Attorney General Mark Brnovich to act on the results of the audit, saying that it was extremely “unsettling” that Maricopa County had engaged in serious “obstructing” of the process:
A failure to comply with the auditor, a brazen willingness to violate a legal subpoena, our Attorney General said that was against the law. That was truly alarming. Furthermore, their willingness to expend significant resources, human capital, you name it, to block and to stop this audit. As I recall it was $18,000 for one of their audits that they spent money on. How much money have they spent trying to stop our audit? It has to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. That would be an interesting number to see.
Petersen said it was a “huge deal” that the numbers, as highlighted by Logan, did not “reconcile,” and that all citizens should be able to “pull up these election results” and make sure they’re all square. “It appears that they broke the law with duplicate ballots,” he continued. “We need to get to the bottom of whether that law was broken, how to prevent it in the future, and hold people accountable that did it this time.”
Arizona Sen. Warren Petersen decries the "obstruction" from Maricopa County, and notes that those responsible for breaking the law during the 2020 election should be held accountable.
"Perhaps the most unsettling throughout this whole process is the obstruction," said Petersen. pic.twitter.com/kZ7UZBbTT9
— National File (@NationalFile) September 24, 2021
Speaking to Right Side Broadcasting Network, Dr Kelli Ward joined Petersen in encouraging Brnovich to act on the information from the audit, saying it was clear that Senate President Karen Fann had “put the ball in the Attorney General’s court” for a reason. “The Attorney General has a 12 million dollar election integrity unit, and that unit needs to be put into action tomorrow, as far as I’m concerned,” Ward said. People have to be held accountable. There has to be a reckoning, especially for the people that Ben Cotton was talking about.”
Ward added that the media was “complicit” in the actions of those who “potentially stole an election [and] put an illegitimate regime into effect,” slamming them as “a propaganda arm of the left.” The media and others involved are pushing the country “into authoritarianism, totalitarianism, and communism,” she continued. “I’m not going to stand for it!”
#AmericasAudit https://t.co/zo47VEWNrJ
— Dr. Kelli Ward
(@kelliwardaz) September 25, 2021
However, despite the calls from Petersen and Ward, it is unclear if Brnovich will properly investigate the audit and everything that came with it. As National File reported, Brnovich “has been a tenuous ally of election integrity efforts, and has only begrudgingly helped Republicans and President Donald Trump since election day of 2020”:
While outsider candidates Blake Masters and Jim Lamon have made demands for election integrity key parts of their campaigns, Mark Brnovich has been in a position to legally push for election integrity long before launching his campaign. Instead, on November 4, after Fox News called Arizona early in the night – provoking skepticism among many – Brnovich defended the state’s election, appearing on television to claim that election malfeasance could not possibly have happened in his state.
When many Americans and Arizonans were concerned about the bombshells presented in SharpieGate, which National File exposed via leaked emails as a bizarre demand that voters who cast ballots on election day use sharpie markers to fill out ballots, despite knowing that they caused issues with ballots, Brnovich declared there was no way this could have an impact on the election.