Thread by @grace_panetta

House Oversight is holding a hearing on the Maricopa County/Cyber Ninjas "audit" at 10 AM today
Witnesses include county supervisors Jack Sellers & Bill Gates, election experts @GRamachandran03 and @beckerdavidj, and fmr AZ SOS/Senate liaison Ken Bennett oversight.house.gov/legislation/he…

Hearing is starting now — Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan was invited but is not appearing to testify

Rep. Raskin on the version of the independent state legislature doctrine advanced last fall/winter: "It has no basis, and it's made up"

Rep. Andy Biggs said "We don't know" when asked by Rep. Jamie Raskin who won the election in AZ (we do)

Jack Sellers, chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, says the 2020 election, where he was elected, was "Free, fair, and accurate"

"There's a member of this distinguished committee who was also successfully elected in November 2020 in Maricopa County" (Bigggs)

Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, Vice Chair Bill Gates, a Republican, says his "dream" was once to go to a developing county and help them build their election system
"I never could have imagined that I would be doing that work here, in the United States of America"

.@beckerdavidj says Trump's supporters are targets of a "scam" to keep them "angry, divided, and donating"

@beckerdavidj Becker says the "great irony" of Cyber Ninjas' process was that even if they had discovered some huge election problem, their breaking the chain of custody of the election materials and tainting the evidence would have made it inadmissible in any kind of legal proceeding

Ken Bennett speaking now, saying the fact that there were a # ballots with no vote recorded for the presidential election (which isn't that uncommon) was cause enough for a full recount
(Maricopa County already does hand-count audits in selected precincts after every election)

Rep. Paul Gosar is speaking now, recapping an HBO documentary called "Kill Chain" about voting machines and hacking (AZ voters vote on paper ballots and officials conduct post-election audits)

On the human toll:

Sellers says he's had Chandler Police and sheriff's department cars parked outside his house "many nights" because of threats, with the sheriff offering to buy him a Ring doorbell
Gates says he's been "doxxed" & employees at the BOS have gotten graphic threats

Sellers said extra security and fencing needed to be put up to protect rank-and-file BOS and elections staffers: "The elections department people are nonpartisan...they are just experts at what they do and they are getting threats"

Rep. Stephen Lynch: "How shameful, how absolutely shameful the conduct of some of my colleagues has been in perpetuating this big lie"
Says a common denominator of failed states is "no trust in elections"

Rep. Glenn Grothman (WI), who represents a state with no-excuse mail voting, complains there was maybe too much mail voting in the last election

.@RepCori now asking the expert witnesses to discuss election subversion and how the Cyber Ninjas ballot review laid the groundwork for it (an interesting discussion — I wrote about where we stand on this issue in-depth last week) businessinsider.com/congress-is-po…