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Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Daniel Martin has dismissed a temporary restraining order aimed at pausing the Arizona Senate’s recount of 2.1 million 2020 election ballots.
Martin said the plaintiffs (Democrats) failed to show enough evidence that there would be harm to voters due to the audit procedures currently being used.
“I will share with you all, I am not yet persuaded that there has been a showing that the rights of the voters in Maricopa County are being protected,” Martin said.
AZFamily.com reported:
The Arizona Democratic Party and Maricopa County Supervisor Steve Gallego tried to halt the audit by filing an emergency restraining order last Thursday, a day before the count was supposed to begin.
The lawsuit alleged Republican Senate President Karen Fann and another GOP senator promised a judge that they would protect the secrecy of the ballots and voter privacy.
The lawsuit also alleges that Fann and Sen. Warren Peterson’s assurances were “illusory” because they’ve outsourced the recount to an “inexperienced third party with clear bias.”
The temporary pause fell through Friday evening, however, after the Arizona Democratic Party said it would not post the $1 million bond that the judge requested to cover any expenses that the Senate faced caused by the halt.
The judge, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Christopher Coury, also ordered Cyber Ninjas, the private company hired to do the audit, to provide documents outlining their procedures.
Instead, on Sunday Cyber Ninjas filed a motion to seal the documents and keep the public and press out of the hearings.
On Tuesday, Judge Martin said he was not convinced voter secrecy was being upheld regarding the challenge to voter privacy policies during the recount.
In the follow-up hearing Wednesday, Judge Martin denied Cyber Ninja’s motion to close off their policies and procedures from the public and media.
The Arizona GOP and Cyber Ninja have until noon Thursday to appeal, otherwise, the agency’s documents will be made public.
Donald Trump issued a statement on the ongoing audit in Maricopa County on Tuesday.
Trump said:
The Radical Left Democrat Party has gone absolutely INSANE in fighting the Forensic Audit of the 2020 Presidential Election Scam, right now taking place in the Great State of Arizona. They sent a team of over 100 lawyers to try and stop it because they know what the result of the Arizona Senate sponsored audit will be—and it won’t be good for the Dems.
The audit is independently run, with no advantage to either side, but the Democrats don’t want to hear anything about it because they know that they lost Arizona, and other scam election States, in a LANDSLIDE. They also know that the Arizona State Legislature approved virtually none of their many election requests, which is totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
The people of Arizona are very angry, as are the people of our Country. If we can’t have free and fair elections, we don’t have a Country. The audit must continue. America deserves the TRUTH!
Over the weekend, a judge in the Maricopa County audit had to recuse himself, making the audit even more dramatic.