Audit Twitter accounts, Cyber Ninjas contract dispute and other details revealed in new documents
Ryan RandazzoIt was Patrick Byrne's people at The America Project, and Steve Montenegro, and sometimes Ken Bennett.
One of the quirky mysteries surrounding the Republican audit of Arizona's election is who ran the sharp-tongued Twitter accounts for the audit before the social-media platform suspended them for violating its policies in July.
Documents that a judge ordered to be released Friday show that, at least part of the time, Montenegro, a former state lawmaker, political operative and one-time congressional candidate, was directing the tweets, along with Bennett, the audit liaison.
Bennett said The America Project controlled the accounts.
The new documents include texts and emails from people working on the audit, and they reveal other details of the operations as well, such as a tiff Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan had with the Senate over the terms of his contract, and Senate President Karen Fann nearly hiring Phil Waldron to run the audit.
Waldron is a retired colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve who worked with then-President Donald Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani trying to stir concerns of problems with the election after Trump lost in November 2020.
Texts between Fann and Waldron show she preferred to hire a company he was working with for the audit, and the Senate nearly announced it. But the Republican members of the Senate supporting the audit decided he was too controversial for the work.
The Arizona Republic obtained the documents because it had sued the Senate for documents related to the audit after lawmakers refused to provide them under the state Public Records Law.
Another group, the left-leaning nonprofit American Oversight, has sued for them as well.
The Senate posted the documents to a public website Friday.
Here are some excerpts.
Authors of feisty Twitter accounts revealed
Two Twitter accounts tied to the audit, which clearly were run by people with inside knowledge of the operations at Veterans Memorial Coliseum, drew substantial attention over the summer because of the nasty, combative tone they took.
Audit liaison Ken Bennett and other audit officials would not disclose to journalists, who asked frequently, who was running the Twitter accounts. Bennett at one point said the initial account he started was run by a group of volunteers.
On Saturday, when confronted with his own texts revealing the others involved, Bennett offered this explanation:
Bennett said he created the initial @ArizonaAudit account in the spring, but soon he was introduced to a group of people from The America Project who were at the audit. The group is run by Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock, and provided substantial funding for the audit.
Bennett said he provided the password to the account so that those operatives could "help" with the tweets.
Meanwhile, he said, The America Project brought in Montenegro to help their effort.
In 2018, Montenegro acknowledged as a congressional candidate that he traded text messages for months with a junior legislative staffer, including receiving a topless photo from the woman.
The married Christian minister who made family and faith central to his campaign maintained he had done nothing inappropriate.
Bennett said he believed the group used Montenegro to give them an Arizona perspective, as he believes most of the volunteers were from out of state.
"For about a week, they would come to me every day with an idea of what might be tweeted out and we would usually do a video recording that would be tweeted out, and things were going fine, until one weekend they started tweeting things out that I was not consulted on and I objected," Bennett said.
The America Project changed the password, and for about a week Bennett tried to negotiate to regain access.
"Things got confrontational for a few days," he said.
At some point, Bennett said there was an agreement to have The America Project submit draft tweets through a software platform that Bennett and Montenegro could edit.
The deal didn't last long, Bennett said, with The America Project locking him out of the account again. Bennett said The America Project volunteers launched the second account, @AuditWarRoom.
The second account was more combative than the first.
On July 16, the "war room" account mocked a left-leaning political activist in Arizona whose dog had recently died. When the activist criticized the audit on Twitter, the account reposted pictures of the dog from that user's account in a response to him with the caption "woof woof."
The original tweet is gone with the account, but the man who was the target of the attack reposted a picture of the message that is still available online.
On Saturday, Montenegro did not respond to text messages about his involvement, including one asking if he specifically authorized the dog tweet.
Bennett said he was unaware of that particular tweet.
Fann said in a message to The Republic that she never authorized anyone to run the Twitter accounts. She said she had asked for the "unprofessional" tweets to stop.
The new documents show Montenegro's oversight.
In May, Arizona journalists discussed on Twitter how Bennett pledged to tone down the tweets from the audit, and a text message from Montenegro obtained by The Republic shows he objected.
"We can't let Ken stop the Twitter effort," Montenegro said in a text message to audit spokesman Randy Pullen on May 2. He included screenshots of the journalists, Brahm Resnik of 12 News and Dillon Rosenblatt, then of the Arizona Capitol Times, saying that Bennett promised changes.
"Media is feeling the heat," Montenegro said. "Seeing how effective the Twitter account is defending the audit and messaging. Also fundraising."
Other texts show that, at least at one point, Bennett and Montenegro oversaw what was posted to the audit Twitter account.
On May 10, someone named Patrick Weaver sent a text to Bennett and Montenegro with a suggested tweet about Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs. Bennett replied to the text with suggestions to make it more impactful. Weaver then asked Montenegro's opinion before proceeding.
Bennett said Saturday that Weaver was among the people from The America Project.
On May 18, Montenegro asked Pullen if "the team" could tweet during a hearing where audit contractors were presenting information to the Senate. At that hearing, the contractors backtracked on claims that the county had deleted data, something the county had vehemently denied.
The claim was first lodged by the audit’s Twitter account, which said: “Maricopa County deleted a directory full of election databases from the 2020 election cycle days before the election equipment was delivered to the audit. This is spoilation of evidence!”
The county maintains that the data in question never was deleted but that the contractors hired by the Senate were too incompetent to find it on the equipment that the county turned over to the Senate for the audit.
"The team wants to be tweeting out info as the hearing is on," Montenegro said to Pullen the day of the hearing. "The county Twitter is tweeting out rebutting what is being said in the hearing."
Twitter eventually suspended the audit accounts in July for what it called "platform manipulation."
One of Twitter's rules about platform manipulation seems pertinent regarding the multiple accounts.
According to Twitter: "You can’t artificially amplify or disrupt conversations through the use of multiple accounts or by coordinating with others to violate the Twitter Rules. This includes ... operating multiple accounts with overlapping use cases, such as identical or similar personas or substantially similar content."
Observers on Twitter had noted the apparent ties between the Arizona audit Twitter accounts and similar accounts purporting to raise funds for the effort and audits in other states.
On July 27, Fann texted a Senate staffer and asked her to check “ASAP” whether the audit Twitter accounts were operating.
The Senate staffer responded that the hashtags related to the audit were available but the accounts were still suspended. The exchange shows Fann confuses the Twitter hashtags and the accounts.
The staffer tells Fann the accounts are suspended, and Fann responds that the hashtags #arizonaaudit, #pennsylvaniaaudit, #michiganaudit and others are still operational.
The staffer explains that hashtags are not user accounts.
"Are you saying the above 5 #accounts are all up and running?" Fann responded.
"The hashtags work. So things pop up. But they are not individual accounts," the staffer explained.
Fann said Saturday that she had learned of the accounts being suspended while traveling and simply wanted to confirm.
HOW WE GOT HERE: An Arizona audit timeline
Waldron's company almost hired
Extensive texts between Fann and Waldron show the Senate was prepared to hire a Texas company he was working with, Allied Security Operations Group.
On Jan. 29, a Senate staffer sent Fann a draft news release announcing Allied would be hired, but Fann told the staffer the company could not yet be named, according to emails obtained by The Republic.
In text messages, Fann and Waldron criticized Jovan Pulitzer, an ex-treasure hunter who claims to have invented technology that can detect fraudulent ballots. Pulitzer encouraged a mass email campaign to Arizona lawmakers to hire him for the audit.
"Jovan posting on Youtube and Twitter is not helping us with selecting an independent, unbiased auditing firm," Fann texted Waldron in February.
Waldron responded: "He will not be working with our team ... I think Jovan is incapable of 'discrete.'"
Also in early February, news reports that Waldron would be involved in the audit were published, and Fann said she needed to move to "plan B" because the media was beginning to "trash Allied."
Waldron offered to "be seen" out of state during the audit, presumably to distance himself from it.
Eventually, Fann asked his opinion of Logan, who was hired for the job. Waldron endorsed him in a text to Fann.
Cyber Ninjas contract dispute
Additional messages obtained through the court order show that Logan, of Cyber Ninjas, resisted changes the Senate lawyer made to his contract in March.
The Senate agreed to pay $150,000 for the audit, although Logan would be allowed to solicit funds from other sources. Records show about $5.6 million was collected from nonprofits like The America Project for the work.
Early drafts of the work agreement included a clause that made clear Logan would be accepting donations gathered by "patriots across the country" who have contributed money to "lessen the load on the Arizona Senate." But the final version omitted that clause.
"We can attest in no way does this manner of raising funds influence or change the results that will be reported in this audit. Whatever is found by our non-partisan team will be reported to the Arizona Senate," said the clause in an early version of the agreement.
At one point, Logan said he would need $500,000 paid by the Senate, or 25% of the overall cost of the audit, because of changes being made to the contract that shifted liability to his company. In a March 25 email to a Senate lawyer, he called some of the changes "ridiculous."
"Your edits has made it absolutely clear that if any conflict comes up you're going to do whatever you can to dump everything onto me and my company," Logan wrote. He said his company was only valued at about $1 million and he couldn't accept such liability.
Fann responded to Logan, asking everyone to "take a step back." She promised to work with him to address concerns with the contract.
"Could we get this accomplished today and get this audit started?" Fann wrote.
Logan's gripe and Fann's response were forwarded among Senate staff.
"Good grief, what a ... hot mess," one staffer commented to another in one email.
The next week, it appears Fann, Sen. Warren Peterson, R-Gilbert, Senate staff, lawyers and Logan met on Zoom to discuss a new markup of the agreement.
Logan's issues must have been adequately addressed. On March 31, the Senate announced Cyber Ninjas and the other companies hired to conduct the audit
Reach reporter Ryan Randazzo at ryan.randazzo@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4331. Follow him on Twitter @UtilityReporter.