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July 22, 2021 - Epoch Times
22:50
Maricopa County Refuses to Provide Routers to Election Auditors; DOJ Sends Letter | Facts Matter
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Good evening.
Earlier today, it was announced that a biotech company, which is actually funded by the Bill Gates Foundation, is about to release genetically modified mosquitoes into the Florida Keys.
This would actually be the first time such a thing would be done here in America.
Meanwhile, over in Arizona, the audit of the 2020 election over in Maricopa County has been underway for about two weeks now.
However, it was just revealed that Maricopa County officials have actually been refusing to provide routers to the election auditors.
Meanwhile, as an answer to the Defund the Police movement, Governor Ron DeSantis over in Florida, he announced a $1,000 bonus to all of Florida's first responders.
And lastly, over in New York City, baseball stadiums will begin seating fans in separate areas, one for the vaccinated and one for the unvaccinated.
But is this even legal?
Well, let's go through that together.
This is your daily Facts Matter update, and I'm your host, Roman, from the Epoch Times.
Now let's start today's discussion over in Arizona.
And actually, first, before we dive into the recent developments, I would like to first discuss a little bit of why this audit over in Maricopa County began in the first place.
And in order to do that, I would like to start by showing you this chart right here.
What you're looking at is the result of a poll which was taken at the most recent CPAC event.
And it asked the audience what they thought was the biggest issue facing this country.
And as you can see, the overwhelming majority cited election integrity as the issue that they cared about the most.
Now, regardless of what your personal political affiliation is, or even about what you think of this issue, this is something that absolutely needs addressing.
When you have such a sizable portion of the electorate, which if you consider the fact that CPAC is a very mainstream event, it's actually the largest conservative event every year here in America, and close to 60% of the attendees said that election integrity was their number one issue, the very most important issue that they cared about.
And so when you actually extrapolate that across the rest of the country, that is literally tens of millions of voters who likely think the same way.
And for a constitutional republic like America, which elects our representatives, and in fact our elections are literally one of the biggest pressure release valves in our society, It's, in my opinion, very dangerous to have such a sizable portion of the electorate not trust the system.
And so, how do you address this problem?
Well, one possible way that I can imagine is the route that Florida and Georgia have taken, which is to enact stricter election guidelines.
Another route is what Arizona has been up to.
The large scale audit over in Maricopa County, which is currently forensically examining the materials of the previous election, looking into whether the results were accurate, looking into whether the people who voted were who they said they were, and looking into whether there was any electronic tampering of any kind.
Now again, regardless of which side of the political aisle you find yourself on, this type of process can possibly alleviate the concerns of the people who hold them, the likely tens of millions of people across this country who think that election integrity is the number one issue that needs to be addressed.
It's also a litmus test for the media outlets in this country.
How will the media cover this process?
Will they cover it objectively and honestly, based only on facts?
Or will they color their reporting with the tinge of conspiracy theory?
And honestly, as I was doing research on this topic over the last several weeks, I see that the media outlets in this country, by and large, are mocking in their tone, they're condescending, they're insulting, they're dismissive of the whole idea, and they're essentially dismissing the audit before it's even been completed.
In fact, in straight news pieces, not opinion pieces, in straight news pieces, it seems like media outlets across the entire country are dismissing the audit before it's even been completed.
That's just the state of the media right now.
And of course, big tech giants such as YouTube are likewise restricting Americans' free speech, not just on this subject, but on a broad range of topics.
However, we here at the Epoch Times, we have launched something very cool.
It's called EpicTV.
It's our own brand new no-censorship video platform where you can find all of our shows, such as The Larry Elder Show, Crossroads with Joshua Phillip, American Thought Leaders, Counterpunch with Trevor Loudon, China in Focus, Life and Times, as well as Facts Matter with me, myself, Roman Balmokov.
And starting this week, starting likely tomorrow, we'll be putting up exclusive episodes that you can only find on Epic TV.
Again, I hope you click on the link below this It's right there pinned in the top of the description box.
I hope you subscribe, and I hope that you join us on this journey of exploring truth and tradition through honest journalism.
And now let's discuss the developments over in Arizona.
Now, as we discussed in several other episodes, the audit of the 2020 election over in Maricopa County has been underway for about two weeks now.
And that audit, which is being conducted by the Arizona State Senate, includes recounting by hand 2.1 million ballots, checking for any IT breaches that might have occurred, as well as forensically examining almost 400 tabulation machines.
However, recently, it has hit some road bumps.
To start with, just yesterday, it was reported that officials over in Maricopa County, they are refusing to turn over either the routers or the router images to election auditors, which is actually in defiance of a judge's ruling.
Now, Maricopa County officials informed the auditors of their decision to not turn over the routers in a letter.
And in fact, we here at the Epoch Times, we actually got a copy of that letter for ourselves.
This letter came from Joseph LaRue, who is an attorney for Maricopa County, and in the reasoning for not turning over the routers, according to this letter, was that delivering them, or even the images of these routers, posed a significant security risk to law enforcement data utilized by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office as well as numerous federal agencies. posed a significant security risk to law enforcement data utilized The letter went on to say that, We have previously believed that the risk would be eliminated by redacting the law enforcement data on the routers and not producing it, but we were informed that redaction did not eliminate the risk.
Now, while that letter did explain their reasoning, it was fairly broad in general.
And so we here at the Epoch Times, we reached out to officials over in Maricopa County for clarification, and they got back to us via email, and here's what they wrote.
Our technology professionals determined the information contained in Maricopa County's routers can be used as blueprints to intercept sensitive county data.
Maricopa County has more than 50 different county departments, and the routers the Senate subpoena commanded the county produce support all of these departments, not just elections operations.
This includes critical law enforcement data that, by law, cannot be disclosed, as well as Maricopa County residents' protected health information and full social security numbers.
By providing the routers or even virtual images of routers, sensitive data and the lives of law enforcement personnel could be endangered.
The county is continuing to study this issue, and routers remain in the county's custody for the time being.
So as you can see, their argument for not turning over the routers is that they contain much more than just the election information, and they actually contain sensitive information that cannot, or at least should not, be disclosed to the public.
However, this decision by Maricopa County to not turn over the routers actually goes directly against a ruling by the Arizona judge who said that the auditors require access, or at least the control, of all routers, tabulators, or some combinations thereof in order to garner the system logs.
And while county officials did eventually deliver the ballots and the equipment to the auditors late last month, it was only revealed earlier this week that the routers were excluded.
Here's what Kanbanay, the audit liaison, said about the situation.
Here we are several weeks into the audit, and we still don't have some of the information that was subpoenaed by the state senate from Maricopa County.
They told me personally weeks ago that they had taken all the routers and the internet connections and the hubs and everything out of the building so they could send it to us.
And we would have the logs when we got into those devices.
We would be able to see those logs.
That nothing was connected to the internet during the election.
And lo and behold, they don't show up in the equipment that they said would be delivered to us.
Now, as to what the next steps are, we'll have to wait and see whether the auditors will file a separate legal action in order to acquire these routers.
Now, on a separate note, two days ago, the Biden administration's Department of Justice, they sent this letter right here to the Arizona Senate president asking very specific questions about the Maricopa County audit and insinuating that the auditors are actually breaking federal guidelines.
Let's go through this letter together.
So this is actually from Paula Carlin, who is the Assistant Attorney General with the Civil Rights Division at the federal level.
And it's again addressed to Senator Fan, who is the President of the Arizona Senate.
And it starts, News reports indicate that the Senate subpoenaed ballots, election systems, and election materials from Maricopa County and required that they be turned over to private contractors led by a firm known as Cyber Ninjas.
The Department of Justice has reviewed available information, including news reports, and complaints regarding the procedures being used for this audit.
The information of which we are aware raises concerns regarding at least two issues of potential noncompliance with federal laws enforced by the Department.
The first issue relates to a number of reports suggesting that the ballots, election systems, and election materials that are the subject of the Maricopa County audit are no longer under the ultimate control of state and local elections officials, are not being adequately safeguarded by contractors at an insecure facility, and are at risk of being lost, stolen, altered, compromised, or destroyed.
Now to pause here for a moment, what they're basically saying is that when the state senate subpoenaed these materials and turned them over to the Cyber Ninjas, as well as the three other firms to conduct the audit itself, They actually broke a federal statute because they are ultimately no longer in control of the materials themselves and that they are at risk of being lost, stolen, altered, or compromised or destroyed.
Now, it continues.
The second issue relates to the Cyber Ninja Statement of Work for this audit.
Among other things, the statement of work indicates that the contractor has been working with a number of individuals to identify voter registrations that did not make sense and then knock on doors to confirm if valid voters actually lived at the stated address.
The statement of work also indicates that the contractor will select a minimum of three precincts in Maricopa County with a high number of anomalies in order to conduct an audit of voting history and that voters may be contacted through a combination of phone calls and physical canvassing to collect information of whether the individual voted in the election in November of 2020.
This description of the proposed work of the audit raises concerns regarding the potential intimidation of voters.
Furthermore, it goes on to say that So the second thing that they are discussing is that by looking into whether the people who voted were who they said they were, the cyber ninjas are intimidating the voters in Maricopa County.
Hey, just as an addendum, there was something that I didn't get to discuss in the in-studio filming of that segment.
Actually, two things that I think are worth talking about.
One is that we got a chance to actually comb through the news articles that that DOJ letter was citing as evidence of something going awry in the audit.
And once you actually read those news articles, it doesn't seem to actually support that conclusion.
For instance, when you read the first article, that article was claiming that there were security lapses in the audit process.
But when you actually read that article, the only evidence that it presented was the opinions of a local Democrat politician as well as a security expert And these two people were basing their conclusions on a single video that was prepared by a local Arizona news channel.
Now, we already discussed that video, I believe, two episodes ago.
We dissected it.
And it didn't actually present any concrete evidence of the audit process going awry.
In fact, the Arizona Senate president, she offered a rebuttal to that video.
So you can check that out two episodes ago.
But that was the first thing.
And then the second and third articles in that DOJ letter We're actually published in January and February, respectively.
And that was before either the venue was selected for this audit or the contractors for the audit were hired, including the Cyber Ninjas.
And so I don't believe that they can offer any conclusive evidence that something was going awry with the audit.
Now, besides that, Ken Binet, who is the former Arizona Secretary of State as well as the audit liaison, we already mentioned him earlier in the episode, he told us here at the Epoch Times that that DOJ letter The assertions in it were, quote, completely unfounded.
And he said this, quote, we will be sending a rebuttal letter.
And then he went on, we welcome DOJ or anyone else to come see what's really happening because the ballots are secure and there is no risks.
So if you want to read his statement for yourself, I'll throw the link to it in the description box below.
And I guess we'll just have to wait for this rebuttal letter from the Arizona Senate to see what the next process will be.
Otherwise, Roman in the studio, back to you.
And so we'll just have to wait and see what the Arizona State Senate says in response to this letter here from the DOJ.
Now, we hear the Epoch Times.
We reached out to the Arizona Senate president for comment on this matter, but we have yet to hear back.
Regardless, if you would like to see the audit for yourself, as always, you can go to azaudit.org, where you can watch the audit happening in real time from nine different camera angles.
It seems to be going on track besides these things happening in the background.
I'll throw a link to azaudit.org, as well as a link to this letter, as well as a link to that article about the routers, It'll all be in the description box below this video.
If you'd like to check out and dive deeper, all the links will be down there.
Now, before we move on over and discuss what's happening in Florida, how a biotech firm that's funded by the Bill Gates Foundation is about to release genetically modified mosquitoes into the Florida Keys, I would like to take a quick moment and introduce our sponsor for today's episode, and I will do so from the sound booth.
That's right.
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And American Heart for Gold, thank you so much for sponsoring our episode.
And now Roman in the studio.
Back to you.
And now, let's move on over to Florida.
And to start with, for the first time ever, genetically modified mosquitoes have been released in the United States.
This was done as a part of an experiment to combat certain diseases like dung fever, yellow fever, and the Zika virus.
Now, the company behind these mosquitoes is a British biotechnology firm called Oxitec, and they are actually funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
In a statement, Oxitec said that this experiment is part of a larger effort to tackle a disease-transmitting invasive mosquito population, this one right here, this particular species, which this company says is responsible for virtually all mosquito-borne diseases transmitted to humans.
This particular species of mosquito makes up about 4% of the mosquito population over in the Florida Keys, and supposedly it is this particular invasive mosquito species that's responsible for transmitting things like dung fever, the Zika virus, yellow fever, as well as heartworm.
Now, this experiment did seem to go through the proper approval process, getting the okay from the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District.
It's an agency responsible for this.
It was approved by the EPA. It was approved by the Florida Department of Agriculture, as well as the Centers for Disease Control.
In fact, here's what the executive director of the Florida Keys Mosquito Control Agency said in a statement.
We really started looking at this about a decade ago, because we were in the middle of a dung fever outbreak here in the Florida Keys.
So we're just very excited to move forward with this partnership, working both with Oxitec and the members of the community.
However, this project has faced pretty severe backlash from residents in that area who say that their consent was not sought out for this experiment.
Regardless, what will happen next is that over the next 12 weeks, approximately 12,000 mosquitoes will be released every week.
And just for your reference, these mosquitoes were released into six different locations in the Florida Keys.
It's all within the Monroe County.
Now, these genetically modified mosquitoes are all male, and therefore, they will not bite people.
And what's expected to happen is that they will mate with the local female mosquitoes, and in doing so, they will pass on a certain piece of genetic material that will then kill off any female offspring before they reach maturity.
And therefore, if there are no more female offspring, there will no longer be any biting mosquitoes in the Florida Keys.
At the end of this 12-week period, this biotech company will compare the sites with the genetically modified mosquitoes against areas without them to see what the ultimate effect was.
And if this experiment indeed proves to be successful at curbing the population of this invasive mosquito species, then an additional 20 million genetically modified mosquitoes will be released later this year.
According to a report from Quartz, when other countries tried this experiment, countries like Malaysia, Brazil, the Cayman Islands, and Panama, they saw the mosquito populations drop by as much as 90%.
And so, we'll have to see how this all ultimately plays out, whether it has the intended effects, and more importantly, whether it has any unintended side effects.
If you'd like to read more about these genetically modified mosquitoes that will be released into the Florida Keys, the link to that will be in the description box below this video for you to check out.
And by the way, that is that same little description box that is right below that like button that I hope you take a moment to smash.
Because videos that are like this talking honestly about what is happening in this world right now are routinely censored by big tech giants like YouTube.
However, if you smash that like button below this video, you are forcing the YouTube algorithm to share this video out to potentially thousands of more people, letting the truth be known far and wide.
And now, while we're on the topic of Florida, let's discuss bonuses.
$1,000 bonuses.
Just yesterday, Governor Ron DeSantis announced a one-time bonus payment of $1,000 for all first responders in Florida, which includes paramedics, EMTs, firefighters, as well as law enforcement officers.
Here's how he described the action in a tweet.
Some want to defund the police.
In Florida, we're funding them and then some, by providing all of our heroes $1,000 bonuses.
This represents more than 174,000 first responders across the state.
Now, this of course comes at a time when the rhetoric surrounding defunding the police is fairly ubiquitous across the entire country, and with places like New York City having defunded their police forces to the tune of $1 billion.
However, Florida looks like it's taking a different approach.
Besides this bonus, which was just announced yesterday, last month Governor Ron DeSantis signed an anti-rioting bill into law, which actually included provisions that make it harder for the local governments in Florida to defund the police.
That measure, which is called HB1, Combating Public Disorder, says that local authorities cannot cut their police budgets without approval from the state.
When he signed that bill into law, here's what Governor Ron DeSantis said.
When we passed our anti-rioting bill, we had a very strong provision in there that said, we are not going to let local governments defund law enforcement.
And if we try to do it, we're going to fight back.
Now, if you'd like to read more about these measures out in Florida for yourself, the links to them will be in the description box below this video for you to check out.
And now let's move on over to Iowa.
Two days ago, the Iowa Senate passed a bill which will limit the local governments as well as local businesses from requiring people to show proof of vaccination in order to either enter an area or to receive a service.
After passing both the House and the Senate, this bill is now on its way over to the governor's desk to be signed into law.
And the way that this bill is structured is that it would deny any state contracts as well as any state grants to any local governments or local businesses if they require residents to show that they have been vaccinated.
Specifically, this bill bans the mandatory disclosure of whether a person has received a vaccination for COVID-19, disqualifying certain entities from receiving state grants or contracts.
However, that does actually exclude healthcare facilities.
Furthermore, this bill says that local governments would also be prohibited from forcing residents to have their vaccination status printed on their ID cards.
Here's how the state Senator Jake Chapman, a Republican in Iowa and a supporter of the bill, described it to the media.
Now, while Iowa, Florida, and Texas have been banning these types of passports, the state of New York has been going down a very different road.
Not only has New York introduced a pilot program called the Excelsior Pass, which is essentially a vaccine passport, it was just reported earlier today that New York baseball stadiums will seat people separately based on whether they are vaccinated or not.
It looks like the whole two-tier society thing is really coming to fruition.
Now this segregation will be enforced at both Citi Field as well as Yankee Stadium, home to both the Mets and the Yankees respectively.
Here's what the president of the Mets said in a statement announcing this new policy.
As we sell tickets on an individual basis, they will go into one of those two areas, either unvaccinated or vaccinated, because we will have some inventory in both of these types of locations.
Now, Governor Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, he was very supportive of this move, saying this at a press conference.
For baseball reopening, May 19th.
Two different categories.
Not Yankees or Mets.
Vaccinated or unvaccinated.
I want to thank the Mets and the Yankees from the bottom of my heart.
Now, as to how this actually will work out in practice, the details are still being worked out.
However, likely what will happen is that baseball fans, when they go to the stadium, they will show their Excelsior pass, and then based on their vaccination status, they will be given the option to buy their corresponding seats.
Now, as to whether this is actually legal or not, during the press conference, Andrew Cuomo insisted that this new plan is, in fact, legal.
Although I suspect that lawsuits will come as soon as this plan goes into effect.
If you would like to read more about this upcoming segregation over at the New York stadiums, the link to that article will be in the description box below this video for you to check out.
And now lastly, as we already discussed in several other episodes, on the very same day that Joe Biden was sworn into office, YouTube made the unilateral decision to demonetize our program.
Welcome to my show!
However, we here at the Epoch Times have launched something very cool.
It's called Epic TV.
It is a no-censorship platform.
It's awesome, and it includes all of our Epoch Times programs, like the Larry Elder Show, Crossroads with Joshua Phillip, American Thought Leaders, China in Focus, Life and Times, Counterpunch with Trevor Loudon, as well as our show here, Facts Matter, And very soon, starting tomorrow, we will have exclusive episodes that you can only find over on Epic TV. Again, that link will be in the description box below this video.
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Now lastly, if you haven't already, smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm, subscribe to this YouTube channel in order to get this type of honest news content delivered directly into your YouTube feed while you still can.
And until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times.
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