Cyber Ninjas, the cybersecurity firm that led a controversial GOP audit of the 2020 election results in Arizona’s most populous county, has shut down. The move comes after the company was found in contempt of court on Thursday and was ordered to pay daily fines of $50,000.
This latest announcement from the Florida firm is the culmination of what has turned out to be a week of bad news all the way around.
On Wednesday, a report from Maricopa County’s Elections Department titled “Correcting the Record,” said 76 of the claims made by Cyber Ninjas during the audit review were either misleading, inaccurate, or false.
On Thursday, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in Phoenix delivered a detailed four-hour live-streamed rebuttal of all the firm’s claims, showing that all, except one involving 50 votes, were either mistaken, misleading, or outright false.
Back on August 24, 2021, Maricopa Superior Court Judge John Hannah ordered the release of documents and communications by Cyber Ninjas to the Arizona Republic.
However, the firm has fought against the release of documents and repeated calls by Phoenix Newspapers Inc., the parent company of the Arizona Republic, that Cyber Ninjas be found in contempt of court.
Also on Thursday, judge Hannah cited the company for contempt after it refused to surrender records of its vote review to The Arizona Republic, which is seeking them under a freedom of information request.
But by the end of the week, a lawyer for Cyber Ninjas, Jack Wilenchik, said the firm was insolvent and had laid off its employees, including Doug Logan, its chief executive, and can’t afford to sift through its records to find those related to the audit.
However, Judge Hannah is not buying the story. Hannah said the $50,000 daily fine would begin accruing on Friday and warned that, if necessary, he will apply the fine to individuals, not just the Cyber Ninjas corporation.
Hannah suggested that the shutdown might be designed “to leave the Cyber Ninjas entity as an empty piñata for all of us to swing at.”
He said there’s been no evidence submitted showing that Cyber Ninjas is actually insolvent and noted that the six-month, $5.6 million review was paid for with donated money.
The official Maricopa County Twitter account seized on the description, declaring that “an empty piñata is a pretty accurate description of the ‘audit’ as a whole.”
