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Dec. 22, 2021 - Epoch Times

25:48

EXCLUSIVE: Interview with AZ Senate President: What's Next For Arizona Audit | Facts Matter

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	Good evening.
	As we've already discussed in several previous episodes, the large-scale audit of the 2020 election over in Maricopa County has been underway for the past five months now.
	It started all the way back at the end of April.
	And as a part of that audit, the Arizona State Senate have been conducting a hand recount of 2.1 million ballots, they've been looking for any possible IT breaches that might have occurred, and they have been examining close to 400 tabulation machines which were used during the election.
	And after five months, we now have the final report in hand.
	It's in fact right here.
	Let's go through it together.
	Let's see what it says.
	And then let's see what Ms.
	Karen Phan, who is the Arizona Senate President, let's see what she has to say since we got a chance to interview her exclusively.
	Let's go through it all together.
	This is your daily Facts Matter update, and I'm your host, Roman, from the Epoch Times.
	And now let's begin today's discussion over in Arizona.
	Three days ago, the final report for the Arizona audit was released.
	In fact, here it is right here in my hands.
	And shortly after the report came out, you started to see headlines like this one here in the New York Times, which said that the report confirmed that Joe Biden had won the Maricopa County election.
	However, is that truly what this report found?
	Because when you look at it on the surface, the recount portion did in fact find pretty much no change.
	It found that Donald Trump had received 99 less votes and Joe Biden received about 200 or 300 more votes than was previously calculated.
	And that is the headline that most publications ran with.
	However, what was happening in Arizona, it was not exclusively a recount.
	It was rather a forensic audit.
	And so, recounting the ballots one by one, the ballots that were already there, that was just one portion of what that team was doing.
	However, given the fact that there had already been a recount over in Maricopa County, that was not the most important thing.
	The big question, the major question that they were trying to answer is whether those ballots were legitimate.
	And so the other more pertinent aspect to this audit was examining, for one, whether these ballots over in Maricopa County were in fact legitimate, and And secondly, examining whether the voters were who they said they were.
	And so, in today's episode, let's examine these other portions of the audit.
	Let's in fact go through them one by one in this report and then compare these points to the responses that were issued by Maricopa County officials.
	And just for your reference, by the way, this report was issued by the Cyber Ninjas, which was the firm that was leading the entire Maricopa County audit.
	And so, the first point that the Cyber Niners brought up was that they claimed to have found over 23,000 mail-in ballots which were received from voters' previous addresses, meaning addresses that they no longer lived at.
	Here's what the report says on this front.
	Mail-in ballots were cast under voter registration IDs for people that may not have received their ballots by mail because they had moved, and no one with the same last name remained at the address.
	Through extensive data analysis, we have discovered approximately 23,344 votes that may have this condition.
	And so it appears what they are saying here is that approximately 23,000 people sent in ballots that they received through the mail.
	However, given the fact that these people no longer lived at the address where the ballot was mailed to, it doesn't make sense.
	But you might say, well, that's not such a big issue.
	Maybe after they moved, they could have just had their mail-in ballot forwarded to them, just like any other piece of mail could be forwarded.
	However, if that is true, that creates a problem, because as the cyber ninjas note in this report, you cannot forward mail, because that is actually a violation of Arizona election procedure laws.
	Here's what they wrote on this front.
	Quote, However, Maricopa County officials have already responded to this particular claim by refuting it and saying that what they did was in fact legal Maricopa County officials have already responded to this particular claim by refuting it and saying Here's part of Maricopa County's explanation for this particular point.
	One, military and overseas voters can cast a federal-only ballot despite living outside the U.S. The address tied to their ballot would be their prior address in Arizona.
	Two, people are allowed to move from one house to another or even one state to another in October and November of an election year.
	If the driver's license addresses matches the voter registration address, they are still allowed to vote.
	Three, for the November general election, Maricopa County had 20,933 one-time temporary address requests.
	In addition, snowbirds and college students tend to have forwarding addresses when they are out of the county.
	And four, mail-in ballots are not forwarded to another address.
	Now, in terms of who's right and who's wrong in this particular matter, well, that will have to be sorted out by the Arizona attorney general, who has already received not only a copy of this final report, but also a referral letter from the Arizona Senate president.
	Although we'll talk about that in a moment.
	However, for now, let's move on over to the second critical point that was brought up in this report, which is that over 9,000 more ballots came back than were sent out.
	Here's what the report says on this front.
	Quote, Now, later on in the same section of this report, the Cyber Ninjas say that at least some of these types of discrepancies could be, quote, due to the protected voter list.
	Now, in case you're not aware, the protected voter list is something that's written into Arizona state law, and it keeps the addresses for certain voters private.
	And that could potentially explain some of these discrepancies.
	However, it wouldn't explain all of them.
	Because as this section says, as we just read a moment ago, quote, In most of these instances, an individual was sent one ballot but had two ballots received on different dates.
	And so, that is something that obviously would not be explained away by people's addresses being kept private.
	However, Maricopa County officials, they did offer an alternate explanation to these 9,000 additional votes.
	They in fact said that the majority of them came from people who had mailed in their ballots, but had forgotten to sign them.
	In which case, an election staff member, they would have reached out to that voter in order to resolve the problem.
	Here's specifically what they said.
	The majority of these involved cases where voters returned a ballot without a signature or with a signature discrepancy.
	In those cases, election staff contact the voter to ensure their vote counts.
	They then went on to say that this type of situation creates two separate entries in the filing system for that particular voter.
	A record for the original ballot is entered into the EV33 file where we track returned ballots.
	A second entry is recorded when a ballot envelope is signed or the signature discrepancy is resolved.
	The appropriate conclusion to draw from this finding is that the early voting team was performing their statutory required responsibility by reviewing signatures on all returned mail-in ballots.
	Now again, whether this explanation for Maricopa County is sufficient to account for all 9,000 of these ballots, well, that will have to be determined by the Arizona Attorney General's office.
	However, let's move on to the third allegation that's raised in this report, which is the issue of over 5,000 people having voted in multiple counties.
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	And now let's move on over to the third allegation that was raised in this report, which is the issue of over 5,000 people having voted in multiple counties.
	And for this part, what the Cyber Ninjas did was that they took Maricopa County's list of all the voters who had cast the ballot in this election.
	This is something, by the way, that's also known as the VM55 final voted file.
	And they compared these names from Maricopa County against the equivalent files from Arizona's 14 other counties.
	And once they did that, they found a total of over 5,000 people With the same first name, middle name, last name, and birth year.
	Here's specifically what this report said on this front.
	The ballot impacted was calculated by the total number of votes, 10,342, and subtracting the maximum number of potential unique people, 5,047.
	This yielded 5,295.
	However, Maricopa County, they refuted this claim by saying that this can be explained by considering people who were born in the same year but had very common names.
	Here's what they said.
	There are more than 7 million people in Arizona, and yes, some of them share names and birth years.
	Different people, same name.
	Here's an example.
	If you search for Maria Garcia, born in 1980, you'll get 7 active voters in Maricopa County and 12 statewide.
	And that's just one name.
	And once again, whether that explanation accounts for all 5,000 of these people, well, that'll have to be sorted out by the Arizona Attorney General.
	Now, another claim that this report makes, and it also has to do with the VM55 voter file, the one that we just mentioned a moment ago, the Cyber Ninjas alleged that the number of ballots which were tallied in the official Maricopa County results, meaning in that VM55 voter file, it was 3,432 votes more than The official result totals do not match the equivalent totals from the final vote file,
	VM55. This is significant, because the number of individuals who showed up to vote should always match the number of votes cast.
	Now, in another point, the Cyber Ninja said that there were 2,600 more duplicate ballots than original ballots which were sent to be duplicated.
	And to give you a bit of context on this particular point, in Arizona, if you have a ballot that is, let's say, damaged or it's somehow improperly marked...
	Then in that scenario, those ballots are sent to be duplicated.
	And so what's supposed to happen is that an election employee, he's supposed to take that damaged ballot, take a clean new ballot, and then mark the new ballot in order to preserve the voter's original intent.
	He's supposed to just mark it the way it's originally marked.
	However, the auditors, meaning the Cyber Ninjas, they claimed that there were 2,600 more duplicated ballots than original ballots which were sent over to be duplicated.
	Here's how the CEO of the Cyber Ninjas, here's how he explained it in part during a Senate hearing.
	This is probably one of the more interesting parts, that we had more duplicates than original ballots.
	According to our accounts from our audit, We had 26,965 original ballots, and we had 29,557 that were duplicate ballots.
	And those numbers should be the same.
	Based on the numbers received from Maricopa County, we should have had 27,869 of both originals and duplicates, and they should have matched up perfectly.
	Furthermore, another finding in this report showed that there were several thousand people who had moved out of the county, and some people had even moved out of the state up to 29 days before the election.
	And the reason that it's important, the reason that a 29-day period is so significant, is because the cutoff deadline for voter registration in Arizona is 29 days.
	Here's specifically what this report found.
	Quote, However, Maricopa County officials, they said that they conducted spot checks of these people and did not yet find any issues.
	Here's what the Maricopa County officials wrote in regards to this point.
	In the limited time since receiving this report, we have completed spot checks on the voter IDs provided.
	In the case of in-person voters who had moved out of Maricopa County, we found no discrepancies with the data in the Maricopa County voter registration system.
	We cannot identify a single voter in this initial review who had cast more than one ballot.
	Three days ago, when the Arizona State Senate held a hearing about this audit, Dr.
	Shiva Ayur-Durai, who was commissioned by the Senate to check the signatures on the early voting ballot return envelopes, he said this regarding his investigation.
	My investigation reveals anomalies raising questions on the verifiability of the signature verification process.
	Now specifically, what Dr.
	Shiva and his team were commissioned to do by the Senate was only to verify whether the envelopes contained the signature, not whether the actual signature matched that of the voter in question.
	And according to the report that Dr.
	Shiva submitted, out of the 1,929,242 return envelopes that were provided by the Senate, 17,322 duplicates were found, with Dr.
	Shiva claiming that some voters cast the same ballot three to four times.
	Dr.
	Shiva further noted that over 25% of these duplicate ballots, they were received between November 4th and November 9th, meaning after the election was over.
	However, Maricopa County, they disputed these findings, and they said this in regards to these 17,000 ballots.
	Regarding duplicated ballots, every time a voter has a question signature or a blank envelope, we work with that voter to cure the signature.
	That's our staff doing their job to contact voters with question signatures or blank ballots.
	Only one ballot is counted.
	Now, after this report was released, meaning the Cyber Ninjas report as well as the separate report from Dr.
	Shiva, Ms.
	Karen Phan, who is the Arizona Senate President, she issued a letter to the Arizona Attorney General recommending further investigation be taken following this audit's findings.
	And in that letter, she raised her concerns and reiterated the findings that we just went through, and she wrote this, I am therefore forwarding the reports for your office's consideration, and if you find it appropriate, Further investigation as part of your ongoing oversight of these issues.
	And then in response, the Arizona Attorney General, he said this in a statement.
	Now, furthermore, I myself had the opportunity to actually sit down and speak with Ms.
	Karen Phan about what this audit means, As well as what might happen in the future, and here's what she said.
	The only thing I do know for sure at this point that was testified on on July 15th was we know that the Maricopa County recorder did not follow procedures.
	That I can tell you right now, but I have no idea what else is in that report at this point.
	So depending on what's in it, we will, once we go through it and find out what is there, what needs to be fixed, we have a lot of avenues.
	Number one, we can start working on legislation.
	That we can drop 1st of January and possibly get some emergency clauses on it to get it in effect before the next election.
	If we find something of a magnitude that there were laws broken, statutes or out and out, you know me, I've never used the word fraud, but if there are things that just don't smell right, we will be turning them over to the Attorney General's office and asking for him to open up an investigation because That would be his job to take any criminal actions forward.
	So we have a lot of options.
	It all depends on what comes out in that report.
	Yeah, actually, so speaking of the Attorney General's office, Mark Brunovich, to the people watching at home, they might not know this, but a few weeks ago, about two weeks ago, he opened up an investigation into Maricopa County for noncompliance with the subpoenas, right?
	Can you set the stage a little bit about these subpoenas?
	Can you tell the audience what's been going on?
	Sure.
	So we issued subpoenas back in December.
	I also issued some about another six weeks ago.
	And according to the Arizona Constitution, we as a Senate body have the right to issue subpoenas because we're the ones that write the laws.
	We need to have the information necessary to write laws the proper way.
	So we have that opportunity.
	We subpoenaed a lot of the information about the elections to find out where the problems are, to see if we have to Change our laws, create new laws.
	And Maricopa County has refused to turn over about half of the stuff that is in there, the routers, the Splunk logs, a number of things.
	And they have basically, they took us to court, said, you don't have the right to subpoena us.
	The court said, yes, they do.
	And they have still stalled us.
	Now, here's the problem.
	In Arizona, the statutes say that our remedy for them not complying is we have to do a resolution of contempt.
	Which means I need 16 Senate members to vote on that.
	And then at that point, I have the authority to compel them to show up at the Senate to answer these and compel them to give us this information.
	We only have 16 Republicans, and I have one Republican who is very close friends with a couple of the Board of Supervisors and is refusing to give his vote on...
	Resolution of contempt.
	So I can't bring them in.
	We went to the courts and said, we need you to help us.
	And the court said, you have a remedy.
	And just because you can't get that 16th vote, then that's not our fault and we're not going to step in.
	So what I've done is now I have been FOA requested so many times, I can't even count.
	And we are complying with those FOA requests as the statutes require us to do.
	And so about three weeks ago, I issued FOA requests on everybody.
	And I figured, you know what?
	I don't need that 16th vote to go to court if they don't comply with FOA requests.
	So that's the path I'm going down now.
	If that's what winds up happening, you will still get the report on Monday or Tuesday.
	You'll still go through that process.
	But this is sort of separate.
	And if they wind up handing over these subpoena items, maybe you'll have an amendment to their report.
	Is that correct?
	Yes, absolutely.
	And thank you for bringing that up, because that's an important part.
	Because they have withheld information, not only has it cost the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars more because of the games they've been playing, and I've said all along, what have you got to hide?
	You know, from day one, I said, let's do this together.
	Don't move the ballots.
	Don't move the machines.
	Let's pick an auditor together.
	Let's do it together.
	I've been saying that from day one.
	And they have fought us every step of the way.
	And I keep saying, what have you got to hide?
	If you believe in honest elections and you want to make sure that we're following our laws, then why aren't you working with me on this?
	We have no agenda here.
	We're not trying to overturn anything.
	We just want to know that the votes were counted properly, that those who won won as they should have.
	And if they didn't or if they weren't following the rules, then we need to make sure that the laws are being followed.
	What I'm going to tell you is in this report that we will come out will be stuff that you can see where we can prove the information that we have gotten, where we can do that.
	But I can tell you there is also going to be a part.
	We're not done with this, even with the final report, because we still have a lot of issues where two and two is not adding up to four.
	We still have some other things that we're 90% sure, but we need that extra 10%.
	We need the Splunk logs.
	We want the routers.
	We want some other things.
	And so we're going to continue to pursue that just because the final report comes out.
	It may be only part one of a final report because we are not dropping.
	Case in point, for months we have been asking for the images of all of the ballot Envelopes where it's people signed because we have affidavits of people saying that worked at the polls where they were told don't bother checking the signatures anymore.
	Don't do this.
	So we've been asking for months.
	We just now got those images day before yesterday, which is interesting because the words out there that the draft report is ready to come out next week.
	Now all of a sudden they finally turn over the images of the envelopes.
	And then just yesterday, the Secretary of State and the new Maricopa County reporter both put out huge, Secretary of State one's a hundred and some pages long, that is literally trashing the audit before we even release the report.
	So they are, talk about gaslighting, this is almost getting comical to this point, which is It's sad because elections is not a funny subject.
	So last question that I wanted to ask you is actually on that front.
	So I feel, given all the reporting that has led up to this point in the sort of the mainstream corporate media, that no matter how well checked and thorough the final report is, even if let's say you segment out, say, you know, this 10% has not been proven, but this 90% we can, you know, prove without a shadow of a doubt, there will still be very negative reports coming out about it.
	And a lot of people who follow those media They might be very skeptical of this final report.
	If you were able to speak to those people who follow that narrative and who have been following that narrative over the last, let's say, four months now, what would you tell them?
	I would say quit listening to the liberal media because they have not reported this honestly from day one.
	They report what they want to report, but they're not reporting the big picture.
	We have always been, if you notice, as far as the Senate's been concerned, We haven't let information out because an audit is an audit.
	When it's done, it's done.
	I don't care whether you're auditing your checkbook or you're auditing a department.
	You do the audit and you show here are the facts and here is the backup documentation.
	Here is the proof.
	And all I'm asking is for the people, look at it and make up your own mind.
	Don't be led by the nose by things that you are being hand-fed By the liberal media that has never been on board with this from the beginning.
	So, you know what?
	Look at the information.
	Look at the credibility behind it.
	If you have questions, send us your questions.
	We'll be glad to answer them.
	But make up your own mind.
	Don't be led like a bunch of sheep and let the liberal media just kind of tell you what you're supposed to think.
	Well, Karen Fenn, thank you so much for joining us.
	You bet.
	Thanks for having me.
	This story is obviously still developing, and we here at The Epoch Times will continue to follow it and report on everything as honestly and transparently as we can, giving you both sides so that you can make up your own mind.
	If you'd like to read about anything that we went through today, including the Cyber Ninjas report or that separate report from Dr. Shiva, I'll throw all the links to that into the description box below this video for you to check out.
	And now lastly, as we've already mentioned in several previous episodes, on the very same day that Joe Biden was sworn into office, YouTube, they mysteriously made the unilateral decision to demonetize our program.
	We can now no longer run any ads before, during, or after episodes, and the Super Chat feature has just been disabled.
	They're essentially snuffing out our ability to monetize our program.
	However, we here at the Epoch Times, we did not take this lying down, and instead we created something very cool.
	It's called Epic TV.
	It's our brand new no-censorship video platform where you can find all the awesome Epoch Times video content, like the Larry Elder Show, China in Focus, Life and Times, Crossroads with Joshua Phillips, Counterpunch with Trevor Loudon, as well as my show, Facts Matter.
	And on there, we'll publish exclusive content that, frankly, due to the censorship here on YouTube, I just do not feel comfortable publishing on this platform.
	In fact, over the weekend, I just published an awesome episode on there where I interviewed Natalie Winters, who is an investigative journalist over at the National Pulse, and we discussed the investigations into the true origins of COVID in regards to the Wuhan laboratory.
	Here's a trailer for that episode.
	I always say that COVID-19 was the Chinese Communist Party weapon of mass destruction, and Peter Doshak and EcoHealth Alliance were their weapon of mass distraction and, really, mass disinformation.
	Peter Doshak has a very long relationship with the Chinese Communist Party, really, Decades long.
	He's collaborated on research with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
	Shi Zhengli has labeled him as one of her, quote, longtime collaborators.
	The smoking gun is with that whole relationship is the fact that in 2016, a study that Peter Daszak conducted, it happened to do with bat viruses in China, specifically how that emerging infectious diseases and viruses could actually spill out of Chinese wet markets.
	So really, that study, I would argue, kind of laid the groundwork For the fact-checking basis that Google used to delist and censor any individuals like ourselves who insisted, rightfully so I might add, that COVID-19 likely has ties to the Chinese Communist Party in the Wuhan lab.
	If you'd like to check out that awesome episode or all the other great content over on Epic TV, I'll throw a link to it.
	It'll be right there at the very top of the description box.
	I hope you check it out.
	Hope you click on it.
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