By Zachary Stieber
The vote by the board of supervisors in the largest county in Arizona not to comply with subpoenas to audit election machines and scanned ballots suggests they have information they don’t want getting out, a Trump campaign adviser has asserted.
“That actually seems to be a major miscalculation by the county board of supervisors, because if they had nothing to hide, they would turn it over and say, here’s a subpoena, it’s a lawful subpoena from the State Senate, then it’s turned over,” Boris Epshteyn, a campaign adviser to President Donald Trump, said on “War Room: Pandemic” on Dec 19.
“What they did instead is waited till the very last hour, and then they went to court to try to squash the subpoena. So they’re trying to do several things here. They’re trying to run out the clock. And they’re trying to not share the information, which, of course, raises the question of what are they hiding?”
The board is composed of four Republicans and one Democrat. The board voted 4-1 not to comply with subpoenas issued by the Arizona Senate several days after they were issued.
Epshteyn suggested there were attempts behind the scenes to convince the Republicans to vote a certain way, expressed disbelief with the board’s vote, and said the board doesn’t want to be transparent.
He noted that tampering with voting machines under subpoena would be a crime. “Unfortunately, we are at the at the mercy of these folks of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, hopefully not wanting to commit a major, major crime by tampering with the machines,” he added.
A spokesman for the board told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement: “The tabulation machines are stored in a secure location until they are needed for the next election. They are not connected to the internet now, or when they are in use.”
State Sen. Eddie Farnsworth, who is the Republican chair of the committee that issued the subpoenas, Republican Senate President Karen Fann, and the five board members didn’t immediately respond to requests by The Epoch Times for comment.
Fann had said in a statement on Dec. 14 that the subpoenas were issued to ensure election integrity.
State Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, a Republican on the committee, said the board’s vote showed they were stalling.
“Not complying to the subpoena is a slap in the face to the voters,” she said in a tweet.
“These lawless tyrants do not want us to look at their corruption. The more they hide the more we are determined to know the truth,” Sen.-elect Wendy Rogers, a Republican, added.
In a letter on Dec. 19, the board alerted Fann and Farnsworth of the complaint it filed in the Maricopa County Superior Court in response to the subpoenas.
“Disappointingly, the Senate’s response was to issue these extraordinarily broad and improper subpoenas. As it is highly unlikely that the Senate and the Board will see eye to eye on resolution of the many areas of disagreement with respect to these subpoenas, the Board sees no other viable course other than seeking clarity from the court,” a lawyer for the board wrote.
The requests made in the subpoenas “are shocking in scope and far in excess of the power of the Senate President or Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman to command,” the county said in the 25-page complaint.
“The requests ought to send chills down the spine of every freedom loving Arizonan as they threaten one of the core tenants of our republic, the right to a secret ballot,” it added.
The county asked the court to declare the subpoenas unlawful.
