Corruption Doesn't Exist If You're Incapable Of Seeing It
Arizona's "fraudit" was always a means of lining pockets, not finding "voter fraud"
Pour one out for the Cyber Ninjas….[t]urns out their head guy Doug Logan went $2 million into debt on the Arizona fraudit, only to ruin his firm's reputation, making it highly unlikely any other state government will hire his band of goons to run the same scam again. Womp womp!
In a Telegram post flagged by Vice, conspiracy fanboy podcaster Nick Moseder extemporized on his conversation with the CEO of the infamous team of "auditors" hired by Republican legislators to ferret out the imagined fraud in Arizona's Maricopa County.
"At this point I've spoken to Doug Logan enough times that I have come around to understanding his decision making process much better than I did before," Moseder wrote last week. "I no longer blame Doug Logan for the way things turned out in AZ. I blame the AZ senate entirely."
Moseder and much of the MAGA peanut gallery has forgiven Logan for failing to "find" the fraud they all "know" was there, and decided that the whole shitshow debacle was Senate President Karen Fann's fault. Sure, she engineered the whole process to put a bunch of goons associated with the Trump campaign and Team Kraken's #StopTheSteal efforts in charge. But she didn't manage to get Maricopa County to turn over its routers, and she complied with court orders to turn over emails and Logan's documents, so obviously this is all her fault.
Though I hope to focus on fewer political topics going forward, I don’t intend to ignore the passion that’s kept my motor running for the past 20+ years. Especially when it comes to stories of not-so-bright people doing incredibly idiotic things for intensely stupid reasons. When it comes to Doug Logan, CEO of Cyber Ninjas…well, how about we agree that there’s a whole lot of stupid going on, shall we?
Whether he’s a Trump True Believer or saw a chance to profit off the “Stop The Steal” hysteria in the wake of the 2020 Presidential Election, Logan managed to weasel his way into conducting the Maricopa County “fraudit.” Perhaps he saw an opportunity to show what his firm could do. Maybe he thought there was a chance to “save” AmeriKKKa from the clutches of evil Dimmocrats. Or perhaps he just wanted to charge in where angels feared to tread.
Whatever the case may have been, Cyber Ninjas proved to be wholly unworthy of their name, and the Maricopa County “fraudit” soon proved it was impartial in no sense of the word. Logan’s merry band of “frauditors” were hired with one plan and one plan only- ferret out the clear and evident fraud that had handed Arizona to Joe Biden.
Except that there never was any fraud. The process had been reviewed and re-reviewed, and no one had been able to discern any irregularities. The only “issues” were in the fevered, overcooked imaginations of those True Believers who couldn’t fathom that their guy had lost to a hack like Joe Biden.
"Now I can also tell you this. Karen Fann made the BS router deal without anyone else's knowledge. She didn't consult fellow committee members, and she didn't consult the auditors. She went rogue," Moseder fumed on September 25. "Wouldn't you think she'd stop and ask Ben Cotton or Doug Logan, 'hey is this agreement that I'm about to make good? Is this going to allow you to do your job?'"
Ben Cotton is the member of the audit team who packed up a bunch of ballots and drove them to a secure "lab" in Montana that turned out to be his vacation cabin. And lest we forget, Logan was so pig ignorant about ballot security that he let workers loose on the floor with blue pens, instead of restricting them to red pens to ensure there was no tampering with the votes.
It appears that almost literally NO ONE involved with the “fraudit” had any fundamental concept of ballot security- what it means, the importance of it, and/or how to maintain it.
Because of the silliness that went down with the “fraudit,” no announced result could’ve been treated with any degree of seriousness. There was so little focus on ballot security that the “fraudit” team themselves could have been accused of engaging in ballot fraud.
Or as Moseder put it, "Doug crafted an unprecedented well oiled machine of an audit process with THOUSANDS of moving parts, which was constantly changing, evolving, adapting as time went on. That alone takes a level of genius."
Well, that's one way to describe what went down. Or you could say that a company with zero experience running election audits perhaps made shit up on the fly and had to constantly recalibrate procedures because they didn't know what the hell they were doing.
Republicans in the Arizona Senate wanted to create a result, and so they brought in Cyber Ninjas with the idea of credibly delivering that result. Except that the people conducting the “fraudit” were themselves so inept they couldn’t have produced a result that would’ve possessed even a shred of credibility.
The “fraudit” wasted millions of tax dollars and ultimately proved nothing except the surpassing ineptitude and intense partisanship of those conducting it. They DID succeed in spoiling untold thousands of ballots and voting machines. But, in the end, it was for naught. The “fraudit” dragged on for so long it became a running joke in the national media. By the time it wrapped up, virtually no one on either side of the political/ideological fence was taking it seriously. How could they? There’d been so many ballot security breaches that no result would’ve been accepted as legitimate.
Moseder was, for some inexplicable reason, trying to portray Doug Logan as the “victim” of a process hijacked by kooks, criminals, and ideologues (when Logan was, in fact, one of them).
"I personally think it's a tradgedy [sic] that Doug Logan sacrificed months with his pregnant wife and 11 kids (now 12) to put his business and reputation on the line. All of that work, risk, and sacrifice to have come out the other side being called a traitor, and to be 2.1 million dollars in debt, with a business who's [sic] reputation will forever be branded 'right wing conspiracy company.'"
Yes, it is truly "tradgic" that Mr. and Mrs. Logan reached middle age apparently without figuring out what causes pregnancy. Call me, Mrs. L!
If you are weeping hot, salty tears for Doug Logan, the guy who appeared in a "documentary" about fraud in the 2020 election directed by Overstock nutjob Patrick Byrne, and then presented himself as a neutral auditor, he'd like you to know that he has a preferred conduit for donations. Naturally it is the fund managed by OAN "reporters" Christina Bobb and Chanel Rion, so you know it's on the up and up….
[W]e're merely salty about the whole thing. And also, we'd like to know what happened to the millions of griftbux raised and donated by Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn, Lin Wood, and Patrick Byrne for this ridiculous enterprise. If it didn't go to Logan, where the hell is it?
Not because we're worried about crowdfunding Doug Logan's vasectomy, of course. (Never!) But because our particular kink is watching these hustlers come up with creative new ways to grift the rubes.
Given that the “fraudit” was intended to benefit Donald Trump, it makes sense that the level of corruption and graft was epic. What remains unexplained about the process was what happened to the millions of dollars poured into the “fraudit.” Those millions went somewhere, almost certainly to lining someone’s pockets, yet Doug Logan’s company is $2 million in debt. The chance of anyone bailing out Cyber Ninjas is just slightly north of zero. Because if there’s one thing grifters are hard-pressed to do, it’s letting go of money they worked hard to steal in the first place.
As for being branded as a “right wing (sic) conspiracy company,” the reputation hung on Cyber Ninjas is well-earned. Logan threw his company into a scenario he didn’t understand but nonetheless thought he could manipulate and monetize to his advantage.
The ineptitude and unprofessionalism displayed by Cyber Ninjas were genuinely stunning to dispassionate observers. It was clear from the outset that the company had no experience auditing elections. There were no methods or procedures in place to ensure ballot security. Once they turned their army of partisan auditors loose on Maricopa County’s ballots, no result would or could’ve been accepted as valid.
So why did the “fraudit” continue for so long? Because the grift was in. The amount of money flowing into various pockets meant the process needed to continue for as long as possible. And so it did.
It’s interesting that the “fraudit” conducted by Cyber Ninjas, in the end, found no irregularities and confirmed that Joe Biden won Arizona. But, once the result of the “fraudit” was announced, the story disappeared. Instead, the results were released as an embarrassing afterthought and to a collective yawn from the mainstream media.
Nothing to see here, people. Move along….
Given the shoddy way Cyber Ninjas conducted the “fraudit” and the myriad ways in which everyone concerned violated basic rules of ballot security, you’d think someone would be held criminally liable for the mess. And you’d be wrong. Never mind the millions of dollars that went…somewhere. The “fraudit” had been authorized by Republicans in the Arizona Senate, so the odds of fellow Conservatives being held accountable were (and remain) somewhere between slim and none.
As for the millions of dollars, corruption only exists if you have the will to investigate and find it, knowhutimean?? And if there’s one thing Republicans have no problem with, it’s other Republicans enriching themselves at the public trough.
Just as so many things Trump-related attracted the worst and most corrupt human flotsam, the Cyber Ninjas “fraudit” was another example of how fraud and corruption are merely costs of doing business in the Conservative political nether world.
Because when you break it down, corruption doesn’t exist if you don’t have eyes capable of seeing it.
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