[url=
https://ktar.com/story/4594636/maricopa ... uters/amp/]Maricopa County officials[url] are weighing their response to a new subpoena from Arizona Senate Republican leaders over items related to the 2020 election, but
it appears they will resist handing over network routers.
“We just received this late yesterday,” Supervisor Bill Gates, one of four Republicans on the five-member board that governs the county, told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Arizona’s Morning News in his first of two Tuesday morning interviews with the station.
“So we’ll convene as a body, will meet with our attorneys, go over this.
If there are reasonable requests in here, of course we will turn those over.”
“We will respond in some way,” Gates told KTAR News’ The Mike Broomhead Show.
Senate President Karen Fann and Judiciary Committee Chairman Warren Petersen issued the subpoena, listing envelopes from all mail-in ballots or images of them, network routers and traffic logs, detailed voter registration records with change histories, and records related to security breaches of election systems.
Citing security concerns, the county has denied previous requests for the routers, which are used by multiple agencies, including the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.
Gates said he hasn’t changed his stance on the devices.
“If there’s a determination that turning over these routers is going to threaten the safety of law enforcement, and it would be turning over personal information, as one supervisor, that’s where I draw the line,” he told Broomhead.
“If they go back to court — I would never try and guess what a judge is going to rule — but
I imagine the judge would say … ‘The ball’s in your court, you’ve got to determine how to get these documents and other materials from the board of supervisors,’” Gates told Broomhead.
Before the judge ruled in the Senate’s favor in February, the Senate failed in an effort to hold the county supervisors in contempt over their lack of compliance, which could have landed them behind bars.
Sen. Paul Boyer was the sole Republican to vote against the contempt resolution, joining the Senate’s 14 Democrats and creating a 15-15 tie.
Another contempt effort seems unlikely to succeed because not only is the Legislature out of session, but at least one other GOP senator, Michele Ugenti-Rita, has joined Boyer in publicly denouncing the audit proceedings.
“Sadly, it’s now become clear that the audit has been botched,” Ugenti-Rita, a 2022 candidate for Arizona secretary of state, tweeted over the weekend. “The total lack of competence by @FannKfann over the last 5 months has deprived the voters of Arizona a comprehensive accounting of the 2020 election.”