On Monday, during their “special” meeting in advance of the Tuesday meeting called by the Arizona State Senate, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors insisted that no files had been deleted pertaining to the November 3 election. It had been asserted that the main database was deleted just days before the equipment was delivered for audit. The county recorder, in the prepared letter he read into the record, and which was unanimously accepted by the Board, claimed that he had seen with his “own eyes” that all the records were delivered --- that nothing had been deleted.

As told by the Board of Supervisors on Monday, if the “Ninjas” (the Cyber Ninjas, one of four companies who are auditing the election) said they couldn’t find records, it’s because they have no experience auditing elections and “don’t know what they’re doing.”

But now, the audit team is reporting that they have recovered the deleted files. To those who suggest the people doing the election audit don’t know what they’re doing, I would suggest that perhaps the auditors are doing fine and should be allowed to do their job.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/05/data-files-reportedly-deleted-arizona-providing-senate-auditors-may-recovered-audit-team/

This is being reported in a very different way by most media who are even choosing to cover it at all, as here in AZCentral, which also includes an update on the Tuesday meeting that the Board of Supervisors chose not to dignify with their illustrious presence.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/legislature/2021/05/18/arizona-audit-senate-meeting-maricopa-county-recount-tuesday/5139031001/

News accounts –- especially the headlines –- are making it sound as if the files never were deleted, just discovered later, casting doubt on auditors’ claims. But in this report, Ben Cotton of CyFir, one of the firms doing the audit, is quoted as saying, “I have been able to recover ALL OF THOSE DELETED FILES [emphasis mine] and I have access to that data.” His wording certainly suggests those files were deleted...by someone. But it’s also possible they just hadn’t looked for them in the right place till now. (As with everything else, they’re always in the last place you look.) We’ll continue trying to find out what happened with the files.

The Arizona state Senate has the authority and responsibility to supervise the state’s elections --- something the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors needs to remember --- but that hasn’t stopped Biden’s “Justice” Department from getting involved. On May 5, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Pamela Karlan wrote to Senate President Karen Fann to say that based on news reports and complaints her department had received from unnamed individuals, DOJ officials are concerned about “at least two issues of potential non-compliance with federal laws” relating to the election audit.

Karlan wrote, “We have a concern that Maricopa election records, which are required by federal law to be retained and preserved, are no longer under the ultimate control of elections officials, are not being adequately safeguarded by contractors, and are at risk of damage or loss.”

Here’s a little background on Karlan, courtesy of THE EPOCH TIMES: She was appointed to Biden’s DOJ earlier this year after being a Stanford University law professor and also a member of Facebook’s oversight board, the one that hears appeals from those banned by FB (not a good sign). She also testified in favor of Tump’s impeachment in 2019. So her inappropriate involvement in state business on behalf of Democrats should surprise no one. She's quite a vicious anti-conservative; read it here.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/05/15/trump-antagonist-opposes-arizona-election-audit-as-justice-department-official/

To make her letter to Sen. Fann even more predictable, Karlan played the race card: “Past experience with similar investigative efforts around the country has raised concerns that they can be directed at minority voters, which potentially can implicate the anti-intimidation prohibitions of the Voting Rights Act.”

Ah, so making sure the Trump-Biden vote count was accurate might intimidate minority voters from voting in...what, the 2020 election? Unless minority voters have access to a time machine, that’s nuts. And, even going forward, I’d like to know how this audit would intimidate minority voters from participating in any election at any time in the future –- at least if they’re qualified to vote and aren’t cheating. Please tell me, how are they intimidated? Don't THEY want to know the vote is accurate? I honestly want to know.

J. Christian Adams, a former DOJ Civil Rights Division attorney who now heads the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), told Matt Tapscott at THE EPOCH TIMES that those at the federal level who interfere in the Arizona state Senate’s business are “partisans who will twist the law for the sake of political power.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/doj-intervention-in-maricopa-county-audit-lacks-constitutional-authority-experts_3820537.html

Maricopa County is the fourth-largest county in the U.S., and Biden's margin of victory was 49.4 percent to Trump’s 49.1 percent. In other words, it was a squeaker. Across Arizona, the margin was likewise razor-thin, under 12,000 votes. As we’ve reported, auditors have said that, with only about 20 percent of the ballots audited, they’ve found multiple problems, including “no chain of custody for ballots, ballot batch counts don’t match with actual ballots, deleted databases, cut security seals, ongoing non-compliance with subpoenas and more.” During their meeting on Monday, the County Board of Supervisors denied the problems and refused to comply with subpoenas.

Adams wrote to Sen. Fann on May 7 to advise her that Karlan is “an ideological extremist with a long history of partisan enforcement of civil rights laws, as well as rank scholarly dishonesty...[who] wants you to believe the Justice Department is engaging in a normal exercise of federal power under federal voting law. It is not.”

The “scholarly dishonesty” he mentioned refers to a 2009 Duke University Law School journal in which Karlan wrongly claimed that during five of the eight years George W. Bush was in office, not one Voting Rights Act case was filed by the DOJ. She never retracted her mistake, and this fact should bear on her credibility now.

Adams pointed out something really significant; namely, that “the Justice Department has never –- in the entire history of the existence of the Civil Rights Division –- interfered in or investigated an election audit because its past leadership has understood it has no legal authority to do so.” In other words, the DOJ should BUTT OUT.

As for concerns about voter intimidation, Adams noted the Voting Rights Act addresses only direct intimidation, threat or coercion of voters. This audit does none of that. As Adams wrote to Sen. Fann, “Karlan is offering an absurd and implausible interpretation of Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act --- one intended to intimidate you –- that no court could possibly uphold as correct.”

THE EPOCH TIMES also spoke with constitutional law authority Hans von Spakovksy, another DOJ veteran who is also a PILF board member, and he said he does’t expect the DOJ to resort to a court order to stop the audit, at least if they’re thinking rationally. Why? Because they have no legal basis to do this. Still, he said, if Karlan “thinks she could get away with it and use a lawsuit to stop the legislature from doing this by out-lawyering and out-resourcing them, I have no doubt she would go ahead with it.”

My guess is that she will, “legal basis” or not, with help from Marc Elias and scores of other attorneys. There’s no rationality among such rabid partisans, and they’ve been known to get their way.