The demands of a controversial Republican-backed audit of the 2020 election in Arizona’s most populous county “jeopardize” law enforcement activities, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office warned.
Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone released a statement after lawyers with the GOP-controlled Arizona Senate, which ordered the audit and recount of 2.1 million ballots cast last November, sent an email to Maricopa County officials on Friday morning demanding access to router information by the end of the day or face subpoenas on Monday to explain their position while under oath.
Insisting the audit’s most recent demands “jeopardize the entire mission of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office,” Penzone explained that access to the information “would adversely affect” his team’s ability “to protect critical evidence, data shared between law enforcement agencies, protected private information and individual passwords, all of which could be used to the detriment of citizens and law enforcement infrastructure.”
