News Roundup: Arizona Lawmakers’ Disdain for Accountability and Transparency

New rules adopted by the Arizona legislature exempt lawmakers from the state’s public records law — and the kind of scrutiny that allowed American Oversight to expose lawmakers’ post-election anti-democratic efforts.

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This week, Arizona’s Republican lawmakers adopted new rules that exempt them from the state’s record retention law and significantly undermine the public records law — and thus avoid the kind of scrutiny that over the past two years shined a light on their efforts to undermine the 2020 election.

The new rules, which instruct lawmakers and staff to destroy all email correspondence after 90 days, were first reported on by Bob Christie of Capitol Media Services, who noted that had these rules been in place after the election, the public would not have been able to see records American Oversight obtained from the Senate’s 2021 discredited election “audit.”

Emails we uncovered revealed the “audit” to be a partisan sham from the start, showing Senate President Karen Fann’s deference to the Trump campaign’s goals, lawmakers’ hopes that a review would help in the false-electors scheme, and senior leaders communicating with election conspiracy theorists.
Other documents include emails, obtained by the Washington Post, in which Ginni Thomas urged lawmakers to overturn Trump’s loss in Arizona.

It’s hard to see these changes as being anything other than a direct reaction to those stories, and an effort to prevent the public from learning such details in the future. And the Senate’s rules go a step further: They also completely exempt text messages sent on personal devices — including messages containing official legislative business — a flagrant loophole.

“This rule change only benefits lawmakers who want to hide the truth from the people they serve,” said American Oversight’s executive director Heather Sawyer. “An informed public is critical to a functioning democracy and this effort to hide the facts and evade public accountability should be reversed.”
You can read more about these changes and our statement on their implications at the Washington Post and NBC News. And see below for the latest revelations about the Arizona “audit” thanks to records released in response to our litigation.

Victory for Accountability in Virginia

On Wednesday, the Arlington County Circuit Court granted our petition to require Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin to release records related to his “inherently divisive concepts” tip line.

In early 2022, Youngkin had issued an executive order banning the teaching of such concepts, and announced the launch of an email tip line for parents to report school officials.
The judge rejected the Office of the Governor’s efforts to dismiss the case, but stayed the order requiring the production of records pending an appeal of the decision.
“Gov. Youngkin should stop wasting taxpayer money fighting transparency and release these records to the public,” Sawyer said in a statement.

On the Records

Trump’s Influence on Arizona ‘Audit’
Records released in response to our and the Arizona Republic’s lawsuits show Cyber Ninjas, the lead “audit” contractor, sought support and money from former President Donald Trump, who received direct updates from people conducting the review, even as they sought to keep him at a distance.

We recently wrote about additional records that provide new details about Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan’s contacts with prominent election deniers and Trump’s team, as well as about his involvement in efforts to cast doubt on election integrity in other states.
The Guardian also reported that watchdog group Documented, by looking at financial filings and records we obtained, traced $1 million in funding for the “audit” to Trump’s Save America PAC, through an account controlled by Trump ally Cleta Mitchell.
And on Friday, the Republic reported that documents from the review “show the endeavor was fraught with conflict and confusion.”

Trump Ally and Border Wall-Building Efforts
Earlier this month, the Texas Observer reported that a company with ties to the Trump administration won a massive state contract to build parts of a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border.

In 2019, American Oversight began investigating the Trump administration’s work with the company, which was awarded more than $2 billion in federal contracts and is headed by Tommy Fisher, a GOP donor and Trump ally. The company was also involved in We Build the Wall, the crowdfunding scheme to construct a border wall whose leaders were later convicted of fraud.
As the Observer reported, Fisher later hired former Trump administration officials to lobby the state of Texas as Gov. Greg Abbott sought to continue the wall-building effort. Last year, we obtained documents from Customs and Border Protection about Fisher and We Build the Wall — read more here.

News Roundup: Arizona Lawmakers’ Disdain for Accountability and Transparency

Victory for Accountability in Virginia

On the Records

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