Karen Fann on Maricopa County Agreement: “It’s A Huge Win For Us – We Needed Data So We Could Finish the Audit”

TGP writer, Jordan Conradson interviewed Arizona State Senate President Karen Fann and the discussion was on the deal reached between Maricopa County Supervisors and the State Senate.

Fann claims that this was a big win for the Senate, but I’m not so sure it was. After all, the auditors will not get to see the routers or the Splunk logs, or even the Dominion software.

The two sides agreed on a special master, John Shadegg, a former Republican lawmaker.

Shadegg will choose two independent auditors. They will take questions about the equipment From Cyber Ninjas and others and then get back to them with the answers. I can’t help but feel that the Supervisors somehow have their finger on the scale and this will be an exercise in futility.

Shadegg has a good reputation, but so did Bill Barr and Mike Pence, both of who turned out to be less than honorable.

After fighting tooth and nail for so long, I am wondering why they gave in so quickly? Do they have something up their sleeve? Maybe not, but it won’t hurt to keep a close eye on things to make sure what the auditors are getting is accurate.

The Supervisors even dropped their $2.5 billion dollar lawsuit for replacing machines the auditors touched.

Conradson: So, you, Senator Sonny Borrelli, Senator Wendy Rogers, Senator Peterson, you all say that this settlement with the County yesterday was a win. A lot of people think otherwise, can you explain how it’s a win?

Fann: Yeah, it’s a huge win for us. So remember we have been for months, trying to get access to the routers and the Splunk logs and a few of the other things. We were successful in getting some stuff on the subpoena but they’ve been holding these out for months. And the reason why we needed, we need the data from them, we need the information so we can finish the audit. Luckily we tried to work with them, but Senator Borrelli filed the 1487 A few weeks ago. Our Attorney General Mark Brnovich, he rendered an opinion that said that we are in the right and that he also believes that the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors was in violation of statute 1487 and gave him a deadline to turn everything over. So, a couple of days ago they reached out to us and said, Would you consider talking a settlement with us? And we said, depends on what it is. So they came to us and they said look, our main concern is we just don’t want the auditors actually touching the routers. But were willing to work with you on that…

Conradson: How was Shadegg chosen?

Fann: John Shadegg was one of the names that were put forward and yes we jointly agreed to him. For those of you who may not know John Shadegg, most of us have known him for many decades. He was a congressman for over 15 years, he is an attorney, he took Jon Kyl’s seat. He has been a well respected man for many decades around here, he’s an Arizona guy. We believe that he will be an excellent one. Now there’s been questions about, oh well you know he did some work for Hickman’s Farm. You know what everybody’s done work for everybody around here, and I will tell you that just because he did some stuff representing Hickman Farm a few years ago, doesn’t mean that he’s not qualified and capable and will be fair and unbiased, he’s great. And so we’re happy with it.

Conradson: What will the joint audit look like, visually? What will looking over the shoulder look like?

Fann: What will happen is Congressman Shadegg will pick the IT experts, we will, and we say we, I mean the auditors that would be Doug Logan and Ben Cotton and Randy Pullen. They will give them all the questions and tell them exactly what we want…