Arizona's Republican-controlled Senate lost a court battle Thursday as a judge ruled that it couldn't withhold a collection of communications between the legislature's leaders and private contractors hired to probe Maricopa County's 2020 election results, the Associated Press reported. The Senate was previously forced to release tens of thousands of communications that were designated as public record, but it was attempting to safeguard another 1,000 texts and emails.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Michael Kemp said in the ruling that Senate members can't release findings from the investigation without also releasing the information that guided the findings, the AP reported.
"Senate Defendants cannot publicly release numerous public statements about the audit, release a comprehensive report about the audit, and then refuse to disclose documents and communications that are central and integral to the findings and conclusions of that report," Kemp wrote.
The American Oversight watchdog group has repeatedly succeeded in court against the Arizona Senate as it looks to have all probe records made available to the public. The group said that it was protecting the public's right to know both how Cyber Ninjas and other private contractors had carried out the investigation and how it was subsidized.
For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.
The Arizona Republic newspaper has a separate lawsuit seeking records from the election review.
Kemp's ruling said the Senate's position that the records were covered by legislative privilege was flat wrong. He said that privilege is intended to protect debate about pending legislation and in this case, there is no proposed legislation.
And he said the Senate waived any privilege when Senate President Karen Fann and other top Republicans made public statements about the "audit." He also noted that Fann and GOP Senator Warren Peterson presided over an hours-long hearing last month that "was much more akin to a press conference." At that hearing, the Senate's contractors presented results of the review that showed President Joe Biden did in fact win Maricopa County while raising questions about procedures.
Kemp said that he would allow the Senate to advance only narrow exemptions based on confidentiality, privacy or the best interests of the state "if those interests outweigh the public's right to access those records."
"From the beginning, the Senate has promised transparency while fighting to block any public scrutiny of its so-called audit process," Austin Evers, American Oversight's executive director, said in a statement. "The time for full transparency is now. We look forward to further rulings from the court."
The ruling could be appealed to a higher court. Fann said Friday that she disagreed with the judge's ruling and would meet with the Senate's lawyers to decide what to do now. She said there are legitimate issues of legislative privilege at stake.
"We understand the transparency issue," Fann said. "But we also believe that he has gotten way over that line."
Kemp set a hearing for early in November to review the progress of the Senate's records release.
The judge said the main question for the public is the basis for the conclusions contained in the report, many of which have been questioned by Maricopa County officials. He said an audit of the results of a presidential and U.S. Senate election "goes to the heart of our democracy" and the public has the right to compare the final report to the underlying documents.
"The public has a right to know the basis for these conclusions and findings and to challenge and scrutinize those findings," Kemp wrote. "The public has a right to know how the audit was done, who paid for it and how much was paid. The public also has a right to know the identity of any political organizations who financed the audit."
Last week, another Maricopa County Superior Court judge ordered the Senate to turn over other records it had argued were privileged so he could review them in private. The Arizona Republic had good reason to believe that legislative privilege does not apply to at least some of the records, Judge John Hannah wrote in a 13-page ruling.
The Senate launched the review after former President Donald Trump and his backers brought unsubstantiated allegations that he lost in Arizona and other battleground states because of fraud or other election malfeasance.
But the review ended without producing proof to support Trump's false claims of a stolen election. A hand recount of 2.1 million ballots found that Biden won Maricopa County by 360 more votes than the official results certified last year.
Fann and Senate Republicans plan to advance legislation next year that addresses what they contend are problems with the state's election system.
The partisan review of the Arizona results, which were certified by Republican Governor Doug Ducey in an election he defended as free and fair, has raised concerns about its effect on public trust in elections. A U.S. House committee took testimony last week from GOP Maricopa County officials, one of whom called the audit "the biggest threat to democracy in my lifetime."
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Zoe Strozewski is a Newsweek reporter based in New Jersey. Her focus is reporting on U.S. and global politics. Zoe ... Read more
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