The election audit in Maricopa County, Arizona, continues. Even though it’s not scheduled to wrap up until May 14 –- and might go longer –- there’s much to report right now.

Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based company leading the audit, claimed that a court made its security plan ("Exhibit D9") public even though it was intended to be kept from public view.

Presiding Judge Daniel Martin rejected an attempt to file the documents under seal because of their “sensitive nature.” Even the plaintiffs in the case, the Arizona Democratic Party, said that the seven-page security overview should not be made public. Nevertheless, for some reason, Judge Martin ordered them filed by noon on April 29, which, of course, made them a public record, right there on the court’s website, available for anyone to view and/or download.

THE EPOCH TIMES, in a premium story, has detailed how this went down.

We’re trying to figure out why on earth the judge would make the security plan public even though both Republicans and Democrats agreed it should be kept under seal. As you might have read, we’ve had questions about this judge, his Democrat connections, and the way he received the case after the original judge recused himself under unusual circumstances. We’re still looking into this chain of events, as on the surface it doesn’t seem to make much sense. But nothing to tell now.

I suppose that after this, if the audit reveals discrepancies in the vote count and/or evidence of fraud, Democrats can always say, “The security plan was revealed! Some evil Nazi white supremacist Trump supporters could have gotten in there and messed with our sacred ballots!”

Anyway, Arizona audit director Ken Bennett gave an exclusive interview to THE GATEWAY PUNDIT on Friday night, and he offered some encouraging news on several fronts. Keep in mind, though, that they won’t be releasing any partial results; we have to wait until the report is complete.

Still, there's positive news: they’ve hired another temporary service to help them speed up operations by more than twice. They might even get to three shifts, to speed up the process even more. It’s reassuring to know that there's no deadline, though –- they can take as much time as they need. Possibly there will be an interruption for five days of high school graduations at the facility, the Veterans Memorial Coliseum, but during that time, there are other places in the building that can be secured for holding the ballots if necessary. Then, after graduation is over, they’ll pick up where they left off.

It’s also good to know that in THIS audit, they’re not just doing a recount --- they're actually looking at factors such as whether or not there are folds in the “mail-in” ballots and whether ovals were filled in by hand or machine. All of these findings will go into the final report.

Part of the plan was to use UV light to check for watermarks on the real ballots, but Bennett said that county elections officials told them the ballots did not have watermarks. So scratch that.

Bennett was asked about the attempt by three “national leftist groups” who have petitioned the Justice Department to shut down the audit. He said that “all the things they say are at risk of happening, the ballots being lost or stolen or destroyed, [are] totally ridiculous. We have very strong security. The biggest complaint we get every day is people from the media or observers or people trying to get in the building that didn’t get their name on the list...We have a very secure situation.”

By the way, get a load of one of the leftist groups trying to shut this down.

They say they’re fighting for “free, fair and accessible elections.” Right, as they try to stop this attempt to bring transparency to the process.

Here’s a piece on their website about “nonexistent voter fraud” in Arizona. Hey, if voter fraud is nonexistent, why not let the process play out and let’s see?

Well, you get the idea.

One of my researchers came across a first-hand report online from an Arizona resident about what’s going on there. We can’t independently confirm, but he says he’s “been watching this audit story develop for months,” and it seems credible. He includes this odd story:

“The county board of supervisors had resisted any legislature-run audit with great vigor, but after losing all the court battles and without being requested [to do so] yet by the legislature, they loaded all of the ballots on a semi-truck, and reportedly drove them around, while the local news mocked the legislature for not being ready to receive the ballots for audit. Then the ballots were returned to where they were stored. Strange stunt, and the heavy media reporting on it that way definitely seemed questionable.”

We went looking and, sure enough, found that kind of reporting of the event, in which the Republican-led Arizona legislature is depicted as inept.

The Arizona resident predicted that, based on this stunt, no fraudulent ballots would be found but the total number of ballots would be fewer than expected. Hmm….

I would add that now there will be chain of custody issues, in addition to what they’ve been saying about the bias of the auditors. This is all to instill doubt in the outcome.

On the other hand, you’d think that if this driving-around stunt “fixed” the outcome to the Democrats’ liking, the pressure to stop the audit would have subsided, but this person says it has “increased exponentially.”

“More lawsuits,” he says, “and now requests from the Democratic Party for the DOJ to step in, and even more hyped-up media propaganda...makes me feel like there is quite a bit more dirty laundry in this closet.”

“It just seems like the Democrats are pouring in so much energy to try and stop the audit, and now with those efforts seemingly failing, to marginalize whatever the audit report contains. It does seem like they must know what the report will say already, and there’s only one way to know that!’

This person, after careful observation of the goings-on, predicts two things: that the audit will show that some ballots are missing, and also that “at least one kind of significant issue” will be found that will “look very bad for Democrats” and probably affect more ballots than would be needed to overturn a Biden win. Again, this is just coming from someone who lives there who has been watching the process very closely, and it’s just a prediction; NO ONE can confirm anything one way or the other until the audit is complete.

Also, there’s no telling what might happen between now and the conclusion of the audit to try and derail it. Though we have no evidence that this judge is complicit in that effort, don’t be surprised by any turn in this case.

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