Arizona voting groups want Cyber Ninjas barred from federal contracts
Cyber Ninjas' flawed 2020 election review, contempt of court findings against the company and slipshod operations should disqualify the company and its CEO from getting any federal contracts, groups of Arizona voting rights advocates say.
Four organizations are calling on the federal government to prohibit Doug Logan or any company he sets up from receiving federal contracts or grant money for the next three years.
Logan, hired by the Arizona Senate to lead a review of Maricopa County's 2020 election results, "failed to satisfy basic security, accuracy, and reliability measures" while pushing bogus claims of voter fraud, advocates said in a letter Monday to the agency in charge of regulating federal contracts.
"Logan’s false statements and rebutted claims made while representing Cyber Ninjas during and after the audit fueled a disinformation campaign, which spurred death threats against election officials," representatives of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law wrote.
Logan's repeated failure to cooperate in an investigation by the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform in 2021 highlighted his unwillingness to engage as an honest actor, they said in the July 18 letter to the Interagency Suspension & Debarment Committee.
"The damage Cyber Ninjas has already wreaked under its Arizona State Senate contract, along with the potential for future harm should Cyber Ninjas continue to operate as a federal government contractor, necessitate debarring Cyber Ninjas," the letter stated.
Logan did not respond to phone calls or e-mails. He also did not respond to a message via Signal. He said in January that he closed Cyber Ninjas and likely would file bankruptcy for the company.
The letter was sent on behalf of two voting rights groups and two social justice organizations: All Voting Is Local Arizona, Arizona Democracy Resource Center, Living United for Change Arizona and Mi Familia Vota.
Alex Gulotta, state director of the nonpartisan All Voting is Local, said Cyber Ninjas needs to be prevented from undermining future elections. He said Logan's track record speaks for itself.
"The Cyber Ninjas engaged in a process here that wasted taxpayers' money and was undermining confidence in future elections," Gulotta told The Arizona Republic. "It's important we don't do that in the future."
Cyber Ninjas got at least four contracts awarded by the Federal Communications Commission between March 2016 and December 2018, the Brennan Center noted in the letter.
"Despite 'winding down,' Cyber Ninjas appeared affiliated online with at least one United States federal agency as recently as a few months ago," the letter stated. "As of early 2022, Cyber Ninjas’ logo was included among a group of prominent 'Previous Sponsors' on the U.S. Cyber Challenge website."
From rural Florida to Trump allies' inner circle: Who is the Cyber Ninja leading Arizona's audit?
Corporation records shed scant light on Logan's next venture. In 2021, paperwork was filed for a company using the same Florida postal box address as the one used by Cyber Ninjas.
The company, called Akolytos LLC, was established by the same entity that registered Cyber Ninjas at an address in St. Petersburg.
Cyber Ninjas had almost no election related experience when Senate President Karen Fann tapped it to lead the review, which she has called the "the most detailed, demanding, and uncompromising election audit that has ever been conducted."
In addition to its $150,000 contract with the Senate, Cyber Ninjas and its subcontractors got millions more from nonprofits set up by Trump allies and prominent figures in the “Stop the Steal” movement.
Taxpayers are on the hook for about $5 million in audit related costs, which include legal expenses, independent examinations of county election equipment and the purchase of new voting machines necessitated by the Cyber Ninjas' handling of the existing machines.
Logan announced at a Sept. 24 Senate hearing the hand recount showed President Joe Biden beat Trump in Maricopa County. Logan's reports to the Senate, however, skimmed over the outcomes and focused on perceived voting irregularities.
Independent election analysts and data experts say Logan's numbers crumble under scrutiny. In a series of reports beginning in October, a team of analysts described the Cyber Ninjas' findings as "fiction." They said the hand count was off by about 312,000 and also double counted almost 23,000 ballots.
The Arizona Republic last year requested emails, text messages and all other communications from Cyber Ninjas and the Senate. When they refused, The Republic and a left-leaning watchdog group called American Oversight filed lawsuits alleging violations of the Arizona Pubic Records Law.
A judge in January ordered Logan to turn over all records and communications related to the audit and fined his company $50,000 a day until he complied. The fines now total more than $5 million.
The few hundred documents released so far reveal a tangle of partisanship, irony and deceit by people involved in the election review, indicating it was anything but impartial. But those are a fraction of the 60,000 or so Cyber Ninjas lawyers estimated at one time were in its possession.
The letter to the regulating agency from the Brennan Center cited Cyber Ninjas' lack of satisfactory performance, record of integrity and business ethics, accounting and operational controls, and technical skills.
It also called out Logan personally.
"Doug Logan’s involvement in the Arizona Senate’s audit in spite of his inability to lead an impartial audit exemplifies his own lack of the integrity and business ethics necessary to be deemed presently responsible."
Robert Anglen is an investigative reporter for The Republic. Reach him at robert.anglen@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8694. Follow him on Twitter @robertanglen
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: AZ voting groups want Cyber Ninjas barred from federal contracts
