Maricopa County Supervisor Resigns After Leaked Audio Admission Says County Knew Their Audit, Dominion Voting Machines Weren’t Trustworthy

Maricopa County Supervisor Resigns After Leaked Audio Admission Says County Knew Their Audit, Dominion Voting Machines Weren’t Trustworthy

by | Sep 22, 2021 | News

By Corinne Murdock |

Maricopa County Supervisor Steve Chucri resigned after admitting in a leaked audio recording that Maricopa County election officials privately shared their constituents’ concerns over the 2020 election. Specifically, Chucri said he and the other election officials doubted the validity of their hand-count audit, as well as the security of Dominion Voting Machines.

According to Chucri, other board members reportedly knew the county audit wasn’t sufficient, but didn’t want to conduct a full-scale audit because they feared they’d actually lost their races. Instead, the county went ahead with an audit of only two percent of the vote. This totaled around 47,000 ballots out of nearly 2.1 million. With that, the board claimed that the sampling was sufficient to prove election integrity.

In another recording, Chucri questioned whether Dominion’s software had serious security issues. He said it was a “screw up” for Arizona to use Dominion after Texas rejected them due to critical security concerns.

According to Chucri, County Recorder Stephen Richer agreed with those concerns. However, Richer has asserted publicly that he’s never doubted the validity of Dominion’s election equipment.

Richer fired shots at Dominion doubters as recently as Tuesday afternoon. He remarked on a topic trending on Twitter at the time, “Dominion.”

“The world is learning it was all a lie done at the expense of a few private, job-producing, for-profit companies (something I thought we celebrated) and individuals who did nothing wrong,” wrote Richer. “Fortunately, @dominionvoting is going to bankrupt some liars as a result.”

After the audio recordings were leaked that depicted Richer as privately sharing county concerns over the Dominion software, he deleted the tweet.

In a letter explaining his resignation, Chucri chalked his remarks up to “turbulent times” and emphasized that they weren’t indicative of any wrongdoing or cover-up by the county regarding the 2020 election. His resignation will be effective November 5.

Unfortunately, the political landscape changed for the worse this year. The environment is wrought with toxicity – and all civility and decorum no longer seem to have a place. The fixation with the 2020 election results and aftermath have gotten out of control. In recent days it has come to light that I was secretly recorded in conversations regarding differences with some of my colleagues about an audit of the 2020 election. The comments I made were during a very turbulent time. My colleagues have every right to be both angry and disappointed with me. I should not have made such statements and offer my colleagues heartfelt apologies.

I do not want to perpetuate the very problem I ran to eliminate several years ago. While I have had my differences with my colleagues, I have  known them to be good, honorable and ethical men. The picture some individuals are trying to paint about a cover-up, scam and other nonsense about my colleagues and myself is simply false. There was no cover-up, the election was not stolen. Biden won.

The leaked audio came from a March conversation between Chucri and We the People AZ Alliance, an activist election integrity group. Gateway Pundit obtained the audio recording. In it, Chucri admitted that those too concerned for their races to speak out against the audit were fellow supervisors Jack Sellers and Clint Hickman.

“[Hickman] wanted to have a conversation about an audit,” explained Chucri. “He just didn’t have the guts to do that at the end of last year, after I’d been asking for something.”

The woman asked if Hickman had his feelings hurt. Chucri said yes. He said it’s “just politics,” and agreed with the woman that Hickman needed to “suck it up.” Chucri said he regretted believing other supervisors when they claimed they were only capable of auditing two percent of the votes.

“This is a blood sport. [He said] I’m not going to kiss your a**, I’m not going to suck up for your vote – I want to earn your vote,” said Chucri. “Whereas those guys want to suck up and kiss up for your vote, and my biggest mistake […] was that I should’ve never believed what I was being told about ‘We couldn’t do more than two percent of an audit before we certified the election.’”

The election results for Chucri’s fellow board members support his remarks.

Sellers barely won his election – he received .08 percent more of the vote than his Democratic opponent, Deedra Abboud.

Chucri won comfortably, earning nearly 19 percent more of the vote than his opponent, Democrat Jevin Hodges. As did Hickman – he won by over 16 percent.

Although Supervisor Bill Gates’ win wasn’t as close as either Sellers’, his opponent only lost by less than two percent of the vote.

Chucri went on to say that he should’ve listened to Congressman Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05) about that matter. Chucri admitted the county knew that they could’ve audited any percentage of the vote they desired.

“My biggest mistake was listening to that. I should’ve listened to Andy Biggs and I think even Brnovich said you could do 30 percent, you could do 60 percent,” said Chucri. “They went and screwed up there because I didn’t know about it until it was too late.”

Neither Hickman or Sellers responded to inquiries from AZ Free News by press time.

Maricopa County asserted in May that their audits were extensive enough to be considered accurate. They included a thread of 23 tweets with evidence that the Senate audit wasn’t being conducted with the protocols or professionalism of a true audit. Cyber Ninjas is the company contracted by the Senate to conduct the audit.

“Our elections were run w/ integrity, the results certified by the county & state were accurate, & the 2 independent audits conducted by the County are the true final word on the subject,” stated the county. “We know auditing. The Senate Cyber Ninja audit is not a real audit. #azsenateaudit[.]”

https://twitter.com/maricopacounty/status/1393273947513266177

Secretary of State Katie Hobbs retweeted the statement in agreement.

“Important thread from @maricopacounty,” wrote Hobbs.


https://twitter.com/katiehobbs/status/1393301623229882371

The Senate confirmed that their audit report of the Maricopa County elections will be published on Friday.

Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.

Maricopa County Supervisor Resigns After Leaked Audio Admission Says County Knew Their Audit, Dominion Voting Machines Weren’t Trustworthy

Maricopa County Officials Remain Mum About Cyberattack On Voter Data Files 8 Months Ago

by | Jul 9, 2021 | News

By Terri Jo Neff |

Articles published by some media outlets this week that top Arizona officials knew of a cyberattack of Maricopa County’s voter registration files last fall but have kept it hidden are incorrect, as shown by the level of news coverage the hack received in December and January.

Part of the problem, however, is Maricopa County officials did not respond to the cyberattack in a proactive manner when it was discovered during the 2020 General Election. There was no press conference nor even a press release advising the community that voter registration data had been hacked.

The dearth of updates has not helped instill voter confidence in the months since then if social media comments are representative of community mood. And a letter Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer has sent to some voters is not helping, as it contains an inaccurate claim about how county officials responded to the cyberattack.

News of the cyberattack was first announced in early December in a Forbes article which revealed FBI agents armed with a federal search warrant raided a Fountain Hills condominium on Nov. 5, 2020, two days after the General Election. The agents went to the residence of Ellen and Elliot Kerwin looking for evidence of the cyberattack, according to court records.

The search resulted in the seizure of several computers from the Kerwin home, along with eight hard drives, and a bunch of electronic accessories.

Megan Gilbertson, a Maricopa County spokeswoman, confirmed the cyberattack to Forbes for its Dec. 4 article and she has insisted that the only voter data the hacker or hackers accessed from Oct. 21 to Nov. 4 was information about voters which is already public by law.

“Analysis by the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office IT Security indicates an unauthorized individual gathered publicly accessible voter information from our website,” Gilbertson said. “Additional security controls were put in place to mitigate against this activity occurring in the future.”

But what Gilbertson failed to say is how someone was able to access the county’s voter registration files and whether the hacker tried to get into other county databases. Other Maricopa County officials have appeared to try to divert attention away from the cyber incursion or to minimize the impact, often stating there were “no problems” with the election.

Steve Chucri of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors announced just hours before the Forbes article was published that he was considering asking for a third-party audit of the county’s Dominion Voting System machines, even as the canvas was still pending in the nation’s fourth populous county.

Then after Stephen Richer was sworn in as the county’s new recorder in January he sent a notice to some voters addressing the hack. The notice tells “Dear Voter” that the county’s IT Security Department “immediately identified the attack and successfully took steps to stop the activity.”

However, it is apparent from FBI documents that the IT department did not “immediately” stop the breach, as the attack occurred over 15 days.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Justice told AZ Free News in May the agency cannot comment about the cyberattack as it is part of an ongoing investigation. But voters seem to be growing impatient with the lack of accurate and timely information more than eight months after the hack.

Among the questions left unanswered is whether the cyberattack was undertaken simply to see if it could be done, or was it intended to cast doubt about the election? Also, was the hack possible due to lax county protocols or possibly even by the unintentional actions of a county employee?

More importantly, is Maricopa County’s reticence connected in any way to the board of supervisors’ refusal to comply with a Senate subpoena for access to the election department’s internet routers?

The most critical question, however, is when will county officials come clean with a complete explanation of how someone hacked the voter records of a major government body.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Who Hacked Into Maricopa County’s Voter Files And What Data Did They Get?

Chucri Offers Support For 3rd Party Audit Of Dominion Machines Day Before Voter Info Theft News Broke