Arizona Attorney general considering 2020 Republican election audit releases bizarre nunchuck video

First there were Cyber Ninjas. Now there are nunchucks.

Arizona’s Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich, whose office is now investigating claims made in a widely dismissed “forensic audit” of Arizona’s 2020 presidential election results, posted a bizarre video on Friday featuring the official twirling nunchucks around on a rooftop.

“We’ve gotten a lot of calls, we’ve gotten a lot of emails, but there’s one thing people want to see. They want to see more chucks,” Mr Brnovich says in the clip. “You want more chucks, you’ve got more chucks.”

At the end of September, Mr Brnovich’s office began considering the allegations made in an audit of the election results led by Republicans in the Arizona Senate, conducted by the cyber firm Cyber Ninjas, a contractor with no previous election auditing experience.

The audit, widely condemned as a partisan farce, actually found that Joe Biden won by even more votes in the main focus of the inquiry, Maricopa County.

“Truth is truth, numbers are numbers,” Arizona Senate President Karen Fann said in September.

Outside election experts who examined the findings in the Arizona effort said its methodology was so poor they may have missed thousands of ballots and might as well have “made up the numbers”. Cyber Ninjas has said, “We stand by our methodology and complete final report.”

Following the 2020 presidential contest, Mr Brnovich defended Arizona’s election integrity from an onslaught of criticism from Donald Trump and his allies.

"There is no evidence, there [are] no facts that will lead anyone to believe that the election results will change,” the Attorney General said on Fox Business in November, when it became clear Joe Biden would pull off an upset and win the swing state of Arizona, one of the few Republicans at the time willing to publicly validate the idea of a Trump loss. “That’s the reality ... Just because that happened doesn’t mean it’s fraud.”

The stance earned the official fiery criticism from Donald Trump, who called him the “the lackluster Attorney General of Arizona”.

“He is always on television promoting himself, but never mentions the Crime of the Century, that took place during the 2020 Presidential Election, which was Rigged and Stolen,” the former president said in May.

In June, Mr Brnovich announced he was running for Senate, and has defended the election audit on outlets like the pro-Trump conservative news channel Newsmax.

“Arizonans can be assured our office will conduct a thorough review of the information we receive,” the Attorney General said of the claims in the audit.