“That actually seems to be a major miscalculation by the county board of supervisors, because if they had nothing to hide, they would turn it over and say, ‘Here’s a subpoena, it’s a lawful subpoena from the state Senate,’” Boris Epshteyn, a campaign adviser to President Donald Trump, said on “War Room: Pandemic” on Dec. 19.
“What they did instead is, [they] waited till the very last hour, and then they went to court to try to squash the subpoena. So they’re trying to do several things here. They’re trying to run out the clock, and they’re trying to not share the information, which, of course, raises the question of, what are they hiding?”
The board is composed of four Republicans and one Democrat. The board voted 4–1 not to comply with subpoenas issued by the Arizona Senate several days after they were issued.
Epshteyn suggested there were attempts behind the scenes to convince the Republicans to vote a certain way and expressed disbelief about the board’s vote. He said the board doesn’t want to be transparent.
He noted that tampering with voting machines under subpoena would be a crime. “Unfortunately, we are at the mercy of these folks of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, [who are] hopefully not wanting to commit a major, major crime by tampering with the machines,” he said.
A spokesman for the board told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement: “The tabulation machines are stored in a secure location until they are needed for the next election. They are not connected to the internet now, or when they are in use.”
State Sen. Eddie Farnsworth, who is the Republican chair of the committee that issued the subpoenas, as well as Republican Senate President Karen Fann and the five board members, didn’t respond to requests for comment by press time.
State Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, a Republican on the committee, said the board’s vote showed that the members were stalling.
“Not complying to the subpoena is a slap in the face to the voters,” she said in a tweet.
Sen.-elect Wendy Rogers, a Republican, wrote: “These lawless tyrants do not want us to look at their corruption. The more they hide the more we are determined to know the truth.”
In a letter on Dec. 19, the board alerted Fann and Farnsworth of the complaint it filed in the Maricopa County Superior Court in response to the subpoenas.
“Disappointingly, the Senate’s response was to issue these extraordinarily broad and improper subpoenas. As it is highly unlikely that the Senate and the Board will see eye to eye on resolution of the many areas of disagreement with respect to these subpoenas, the Board sees no other viable course other than seeking clarity from the court,” a lawyer for the board wrote.
“The requests ought to send chills down the spine of every freedom loving Arizonan as they threaten one of the core tenants of our republic, the right to a secret ballot,” it added.
The county asked the court to declare the subpoenas unlawful.
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