Journalists’ Roundtable 09-03-21: FBI Investigating Ducey, Audit Report delayed, Senate wants to keep documents private

Time now for the Journalists’ Roundtable and for a look at some of this week’s top stories, we welcome Steve Goldstein of KJZZ Radio and Bob Christie of the Associated Press.

This week’s Journalists’ Roundtable covered:

• Report: FBI Investigating Ducey
• Audit Report Delayed Again
• Senate Wants to Keep Documents Private
• Trump Helped Bankroll Audit?
• Arizona Eyes Texas Abortion Ban

Will the Audit report be released anytime soon?

Bob Christie: “There’s an attorney that told a judge earlier this week that the report is not done yet. We learned last week Doug Logan, the head of Cyber Ninjas overseeing the audit had Covid so it was delayed. Now, this week we heard from his lawyer that there’s going to be a three-volume set and I’m sure it’ll be interesting reading it.”

Steve Goldstein: “I think the hope is that this will be done by November of 2022. It seems absurd and if you talk to many so-called mainstream Republicans, they’ll say that this is an embarrassment for the party. This is going to hurt the party next year when it comes to election time.”

Is Arizona the next state to adopt a Texas-style abortion ban?

Bob Christie: “Arizona and a half-dozen at least other Republican states like Mississippi, Indiana, Louisiana, Florida, every single one of them when you talk to a lawmaker at all about this and one of them said that this was ‘wonderful and great.’ Essentially this is a backdoor way of eliminating abortions. It looks like very clearly that Roe v. Wade is if not gone, very close to being gone.”

Steve Goldstein: “The interesting part of this is that we have this six week period which is huge compared to many other states after which an abortion is not allowed. In Texas, we’re looking at potential civil suits brought by an individual against an abortion provider.”