American Oversight Lawsuit Comes to a Close After Two Years Fighting for Public Records from Arizona Senate’s Discredited Election ‘Audit’

American Oversight has finalized a settlement agreement with the Arizona Senate and Cyber Ninjas in a public records lawsuit that spanned nearly two years and extracted thousands of pages of public records related to the Senate’s discredited “audit” of 2020 election results.

American Oversight first filed suit against the Arizona Senate in May 2021 for the release of records related to the partisan review of votes cast in Maricopa County during the 2020 presidential election. In December 2021, cybersecurity firm Cyber Ninjas, the Senate’s lead contractor, was added as a defendant.

American Oversight entered the settlement agreement having succeeded in bringing much-needed transparency to the “audit,” with the Arizona Senate and Cyber Ninjas having released tens of thousands of pages of records as a result of litigation that provide the public with valuable information about how the review was conducted and why. The records — which the Senate fought all the way to the state Supreme Court to keep hidden from the public — revealed key details about the review’s exorbitant costs, as well as about the involvement of prominent election conspiracy theorists.

The “audit,” initiated by Republicans in the state Senate and conducted by the now-closed Cyber Ninjas and its CEO, Doug Logan, was among the most prominent examples of post-2020 election efforts to cast doubt on U.S. democracy and voting processes. Over the nearly two years of its investigation, American Oversight obtained more than 100,000 pages of documents that showed how the review’s origins were closely aligned with the plot to overturn the election results as well as with the work of election-denying activists plotting similar operations in states across the country. 

American Oversight’s lawsuit also led to multiple court rulings finding that records held by Cyber Ninjas were public records subject to disclosure, and affirming that the Arizona Senate could not duck accountability by outsourcing its work to external parties.

Among the key findings of American Oversight’s investigation and litigation:

• The review was planned with an obvious intention of finding evidence of widespread voter fraud for the purposes of casting doubt on the results of the 2020 election.  
• The review was closely connected to the multi-state plot to overturn the election results by submitting fake electoral certificates to Congress; some of those false electors were even employed as “audit” workers.
• Allies of former President Trump, like Rudy Giuliani and Patrick Byrne, as well as election-denying conspiracy theorists like Phil Waldron and Jovan Pultizer were deeply involved in coordinating, funding, or working on the “audit.”
• Cyber Ninjas and other affiliates of the Arizona “audit” played a significant role in efforts to undermine elections in other states, including Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. 

While this marks the conclusion of American Oversight’s lawsuit against the state Senate and Cyber Ninjas, we’re still investigating threats to democracy in Arizona and other states. We’re monitoring the nationwide network of election-denying activists, tracking the activities of fake electors, and investigating the right-wing “constitutional sheriffs” movement. Earlier this year, we spoke out against the Arizona legislature’s anti-democratic move to shield its communications from public disclosure — an egregious attempt to evade the kind of accountability brought by American Oversight’s litigation. 

American Oversight’s settlement agreement with the Arizona Senate is available here. All legal filings in the case can be found here.