Donald Trump hinted to cheering Mar-a-Lago guests that the disturbing Arizona ballot audit by a partisan private company could lead to his White House reinstatement.
“Let’s see what they find,” Trump said in remarks captured on video at his Florida resort.
“Some very interesting things are happening in Arizona,” he noted in the footage that appeared to be taken Wednesday during his farewell remarks before he headed to New Jersey for the summer. It was posted on TikTok by 45covfefe.
“Let’s see what they find. I wouldn’t be surprised if they found thousands and thousands and thousands of votes,” Trump added.
“After that we’ll watch Pennsylvania, and you watch Georgia, then you’re going to watch Michigan and Wisconsin, and you’re watching New Hampshire. They found a lot of votes up in New Hampshire just now ... you saw that?” he added, though it was unclear what Trump was referring to.
“This was a rigged election, everybody knows it, and we’re going to be watching it very closely,” he concluded.
There’s absolutely no evidence it was a rigged election.
The current controversial audit of 2.1 million Maricopa County votes for president and Senate — races won by Democrats — is being headed up by the Cyber Ninjas company, which is owned by a promoter of the “Stop the Steal” lie that the election was rigged against Trump. Owner Doug Logan retweeted messages months ago that an audit of the Arizona ballots would find hundreds of thousands of votes for Trump. The Florida-based Cyber Ninjas company has no experience with elections or ballots.
The firm, hired by Arizona’s GOP Senate, failed in court to keep its recount operation secret. Voter and civil rights organizations are so alarmed that they’ve written to the Justice Department for federal monitors out of fear that ballots will be damaged, stolen, altered or lost.
Trump asks “multiple times a day” for an update on the operation, The Washington Post reported Thursday. He’s particularly entranced by Cyber Ninjas’ examination of the ballots with ultraviolet light, which some experts believe could damage them, according to the Post. It’s not known why Cyber Ninjas is using UV Light.
In the latest alarming development, an Arizona Republic reporter on Friday snapped a photo of U.S. Capitol rally agitator and former Arizona Rep. Anthony Kern (R) reviewing ballots as part of the audit.
Kern’s own name appears on the ballots he was reviewing. He lost a contest for reelection, coming in dead last in a three-way race. Kern is also listed as a presidential elector for Donald Trump on the ballot, according to the Republic.
He’s also a disciple of the “Big Lie” and was photographed on the steps of the U.S. Capitol during the insurrection.
More than 40 Democrats in the Arizona state Legislature called on the Justice Department to investigate Kern after the Capitol siege. His “own social media posts strongly suggest” that Kern was “present at the riot in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, and actively encouraged the mob, both before and during the attack on the Capitol,” said the letter to the DOJ.
Arizona Republic reporter Ryan Randazzo was ejected from the recount operation at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum after he took Kern’s photo. He noted that boxes of ballots appeared to be shuffled around, and votes examined, with no obvious pattern of organization.
Critics have slammed the operation as a Trump rally, and in no way a reputable audit of anything.
The audit findings will have no effect on President Joe Biden’s victory in the state by a 0.3-point margin, which has long been officially certified. But claims of new votes for Trump could undermine faith in a legitimate election and lead to further unrest.