Sep 23, 2024

Cyber Ninjas Closes Day After Judge Finds Them in Contempt, Orders Them to Hand Over Public Records and Pay $50,000 a Day in Fines, after 2020 Presidential Election Audit Riddled with Falsehoods

by Diane Lilli | Jan 11, 2022
Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan at an Arizona Senate hearing on the firm's review of the 2020 election results in Maricopa County. (Ross D. Franklin/AP) Photo Source: Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan at an Arizona Senate hearing on the firm's review of the 2020 election results in Maricopa County. (Ross D. Franklin/AP via The Washington Post)

Cyber Ninjas, a Florida firm hired by the Arizona State Senate to review presidential election results in Maricopa County after former Donald Trump claimed the election had been stolen from him, was fined by Judge John Hannah $50,000 a day last week for contempt.

The company, which has been criticized for their heavily erroneous presidential election audit, quickly closed on Thursday, letting go all employees and the CEO Doug Logan. Logan was a prominent defender of the unreal theory that the Arizona’s voting machines had been rigged during the presidential election.

On Thursday, Cyber Ninjas was ordered not only to pay $50,000 a day but also to comply with an August ruling to turn over public records including texts and emails to The Arizona Republic, a daily newspaper running an investigation into their audit.

In a statement on Thursday, the company said, “Doug Logan (CEO) and the rest of the employees have been let go and Cyber Ninjas is being shut down.”

The scandal and legal order centers on a Maricopa County report criticizing Cyber Ninjas for its audit after the 2020 presidential election. Cyber Ninjas was hired at the time to investigate and write a review about the county election results, after then-president Trump’s repetitive announcements that the election results were fraudulent and the presidency had been stolen from him.

In the heated 2020 election, Arizona was a swing state, and one of the states closely watched during and after the election results came in, during the presidential election.

As soon as Trump saw he lost the race, he started publicly saying that the election was “rigged” and that Biden’s winning votes were part of “the big steal” of the presidential election. After facts proved Trump indeed did lose the election, he is still arguing that the election results were falsified.

Last week, on January 6, 2022, the anniversary of the Capitol Hill violent riots immediately following a Trump Rally nearby, Trump still insisted he didn't lose the race, in spite of rigorous audits in numerous states proving otherwise.

"Why is it that the Unselect Committee of totally partisan political hacks, whose judgment has long ago been made, (sic) not discussing the rigged Presidential Election of 2020? It's because they don't have the answers or justifications for what happened.” Trump said in a statement, shared via Twitter by spokesperson Liz Harrington.

At the time of the audit in Maricopa County, Cyber Ninjas reported they recounted all 2.1 million ballots and then also concluded President Biden had won.

However, the company also included, in their September draft report, that many thousands of these recounted, audited ballots had serious issues, such as many thousands of duplicate ballots; unregistered voters taking part in the election results and voters who voted multiple times.

In response, Maricopa County then conducted its own audit and just released its report last week. In the review, Maricopa County strongly disagrees with the claims of Cyber Ninjas. The county states Cyber Ninjas made 41 inaccurate claims; 22 misleading claims and 13 claims that were outright lies.

In the strongly worded and damning statement in the Maricopa County report and further tweets from them on Thursday, the county said Cyber Ninjas "made faulty and inaccurate conclusions about more than 53,000 ballots in 22 different categories.”

Judge John Dolan, hearing the company had been closed, said, “An empty piñata is a pretty accurate description of the 'audit' as a whole.”

On January 6 last week, President Joe Biden responded to Trump’s lies about the legitimate 2020 presidential election results, and called him a sore loser that created a dangerous atmosphere igniting more division in the US.

"You can’t love your country only when you win,” Biden said. “You can’t obey the law only when it’s convenient. You can’t be patriotic when you embrace and enable lies."

The Cyber Ninjas review, ordered by a then-Republican controlled senate, cost $5.6 million. Though the audit has been debunked due to falsified facts about unreal serious voting issues, the conversation about the 2020 presidential election is continuing to stoke anger among Americans, as the great political divide continues to grow as to who is the legitimate president.

In spite of factual proof, a Reuters poll reports one in four Americans believe Trump’s election was stolen from him, and that he is “the true president.”

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Diane Lilli
Diane Lilli
Diane Lilli is an award-winning Journalist, Editor, and Author with over 18 years of experience contributing to New Jersey news outlets, both in print and online. Notably, she played a pivotal role in launching the first daily digital newspaper, Jersey Tomato Press, in 2005. Her work has been featured in various newspapers, journals, magazines, and literary publications across the nation. Diane is the proud recipient of the Shirley Chisholm Journalism Award.