Senate President Karen Fann has now spent $500k to keep secrets about her election audit

As we approach Month No. 10 in Senate President Karen Fann’s legal battle to keep secrets about Arizona’s election audit, it seems a good time for Arizona taxpayers to contemplate a question:

Just how much (of our) money is Fann willing to spend to prevent us from getting a look at the backroom maneuverings and outside manipulation that resulted in her election audit?

How much (of our) money is she willing to spend to prevent us from seeing public records detailing how she came to be auditing Maricopa County’s election and why she hired wholly unqualified, blatantly biased auditors to do the job?

Fann has lost in court but keeps fighting

Thus far, Fann has lost her bid to keep secrets in every court at every level.

Two Superior Court judges have ordered the Senate – and, in one of the two lawsuits, the Cyber Ninjas – to turn over thousands of emails, texts and other documents associated with the audit.

The Court of Appeals has ordered her to turn over records … twice.

Through February, the Senate racked up nearly $500,000 in lawyer fees to fight the release of records, according to a report this week by KJZZ’s Dillon Rosenblatt.

And still the money dump continues.

Fann is now appealing to the Arizona Supreme Court, asking to keep 1,100 records forever hidden from public view – texts and emails between and among senators and with whomever they were talking to outside the Senate as they embarked upon this audit.

What the heck is she hiding about the audit?

It’s enough to make one wonder: what the heck is she hiding?

Both The Arizona Republic and the liberal watchdog group American Oversight filed lawsuits aimed at giving the public a full accounting of what went on here – some insight into why a legislative leader once considered mainstream would order an audit based upon wild rumors and kooky conspiracy theories.

And why on earth she would hire the Cyber Ninjas’ Doug Logan – a guy who was actually spreading some of those conspiracy theories – to conduct the audit.

Fann has released a pile of records, mostly emails with constituents. But she’s refused to hand over documents that would shed light on what really happened here, citing legislative privilege.

Fann and her fellow Republican senators seem to think they’re exempt from the Arizona Public Records Law, on the theory that they can’t engage in debate about public policy if they’re worried the public might actually find out what they have to say.

But Fann and her fellow senators weren’t debating public policy. They were developing a strategy for an audit clearly intended to call into question the validity of a presidential election.

And it worked.

Even Fann is downplaying its findings

Far-right politicians continue to scream about a stolen election (and use it to raise money and their political fortunes) despite an audit that turned up no evidence of widespread fraud.

Even Fann has downplayed the audit’s findings, or did I miss the part last week where the Senate put out a press release on the latest portion of their investigation, finding that the county’s tabulation machines were not hooked up to the internet?

When the final tab is tallied, Fann’s audit will have cost state and county taxpayers millions upon millions of dollars.

Meanwhile, she continues to spend (our) money to prevent us from finding out what really happened here.

Cost (to us): $491,000 in legal bills through February and the meter’s still running ... make that racing.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Senate president has spent $500K to keep election audit secrets