Journalists’ Roundtable 09-17-21: County Considers Subpoenas, Senate to Release Recount Findings, Cyber Ninjas Records

Time now for the Journalists’ Roundtable and for a look at some of this week’s top stories, we welcome Mary Jo Pitzl of the Arizona Republic and Bob Christie of the Associated Press.

This week’s Journalists’ Roundtable covered:

• County Considers Subpoenas
• Senate to Release Recount Findings
• Cyber Ninjas Records
• Adel Rehab Disclosure
• Mask Mandate Ban Challenged

Why is the county considering issuing subpoenas?

Mary Jo Pitzl: “They did not fully comply with the subpoenas that were issued by the state senate for the audit. Now that the attorney general has made that determination, the board of supervisors have to figure out what to do. They have to have a couple of choices: they can comply or they can say no.”

Bob Christie: “In this case, there doesn’t seem to be a real mechanism but anybody can go to court. I would suspect that one of their options is filing some type of lawsuit. In fact, this law, which was passed about five years ago, essentially gives one lawmaker the ability to pass the attorney general to review local policy.”

Will we finally get the election audit?

Mary Jo Pitzl: “I fully expect that it will happen. It’s clear that the senate has been making plans, they’re talking about seating arrangements, streaming it, where to put the news media, where to make room for post interviews. I think Senate President Fann wants this thing out there and get this done. It is way behind schedule and people are very anxious about this.”

Bob Christie: “I think if we look at some prior hearings that they’ve had, there will be a presentation by Doug Logan, the head of Cyber Ninjas by other participants in the audit process and then the Secretary of State will present their findings and talk about what they found. They did a hand recount in Maricopa County of about 2.1 million votes. There will be two or three different phases of what they present to us.”