Thousands of texts from Trump allies stay hidden in Arizona a year after judge's order on 'audit'

More than a year after a judge ordered the leader of the controversial Arizona "audit" to turn over his texts and other electronic messages, thousands still remain inexplicably hidden.

Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan has released more than 39,000 messages, available to anyone who wants to try to make sense of the disordered, sometimes duplicative documents. But his refusal to let go of an estimated 3,000 more raises questions about what's in them, and why they remain secret despite a court order.

Among the messages still hidden from the public:

• Seventy messages from Randy Pullen, a former state GOP chairman and spokesperson for the election review. These include 10 messages he sent Sept. 20 and 21, 2021, just days before Logan issued his final report to the Senate.

• Seven hundred messages from Pennsylvania lawyer Stephanie Lambert. Lambert was not Logan’s lawyer, but someone who participated in election challenges in her home state and others.

• Any messages in a key eight-day span from July 23-29, 2021. Of the tens of thousands of messages made public from January 2021 to April 2022, not one came from this time, not even with redactions. The gap came with no explanation.

The Arizona Republic has fought for public records of the review of the 2020 Maricopa County general election for almost two years from the Arizona Senate and from the Cyber Ninjas. Reporters have reviewed what has been released and noted the redactions. The news organization's attorneys have raised objections where they believe information was improperly withheld.

“It has been like pulling teeth getting these records from the defendants,” said attorney David Bodney, who represents The Arizona Republic.

“At various points they have indicated that the document production was complete or nearly complete, and we continue to find basis to believe there are yet more documents and information to be uncovered,” Bodney said.

“We want to end this dispute as expeditiously as possible, but we can only end it when the Senate and Cyber Ninjas honor their legal duties by disclosing all of the responsive public records.”

Why do these records matter, as the 2020 election fades further from view?

The Arizona Senate ordered an "independent" review of Maricopa County election results. The documents show the partisanship baked into Logan's project as he worked for the Senate. They detail how former President Donald Trump's loyalists were involved, proving the exercise was anything but independent.

Many of the people messaging with Logan as he worked in Arizona were enmeshed in election challenges around the country, and legal probes into some of their actions continue. The hidden documents could help clarify whether they were working in concert at Trump's behest and could influence those investigations in other states.

Finally, clarity on what exactly happened here seems essential as Arizona prepares for another presidential election in 2024.

As The Republic has dived into the records, a trio of election experts has done the same, creating a searchable and chronological database from documents Logan and his attorneys have provided in various formats.

Putting the documents in order has allowed them to see where in conversations the redactions continue to occur, raising even more specific questions.

Logan did not respond to a text message seeking comment about the redactions. He last corresponded with The Republic in January, when he was asked about his redactions and the contents of his messages.

"It sounds like you've already made up your mind and are willing to distort the facts to match your conspiracy theories," Logan said at the time.

Logan's lawyer, David Hardy of Tucson, did not respond to a request for comment.

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Documents released in various formats

The Senate started turning over documents in June 2021, nearly two years ago. Logan, though, took longer.

The release of documents has required persistent legal pressure from attorneys for The Republic.

In April 2022, Hardy told a judge there was a "factual question" over whether Logan needed to hand over the records.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Michael Kemp rebuked him. "He needs to turn over everything. Every email. Every text. Everything," Kemp said. "The issue of public records has been clearly resolved. These are public records. There is no more dispute over that. That is the law of the case. Period."

Bodney said, “All along Cyber Ninjas has resisted disclosing public records in this case. Only recently, after having been sanctioned repeatedly, have records begun to roll in, slowly over a period of months.”

Even after a judge sanctioned Logan and his wife $50,000 a day for defying those orders, he dragged his feet. Late last year, he finally turned over thousands of his texts and messages from the Signal app.

But even then, Logan continued to conceal thousands of documents.

The Senate and Cyber Ninjas have followed a familiar pattern in response to requests for records under the Arizona Public Records Law. First, they released thousands of innocuous messages, such as emails from supporters. Then, after continued pressure through the courts, more documents have come out.

Logan has turned over records in different formats, making them time-consuming to cross reference. On top of that, they were initially released in non-chronological order.

For example, in November 2022, Logan and the Senate turned over 200 pages of Logan’s messages formatted as images. The pictures of the Excel files were not searchable and required hours of organization to comprehend.

In December 2022, Logan released another 915 pages of documents, again all image files, as well as long lists of messages that were redacted for various reasons.

On March 21, Logan’s lawyer handed over 19 pages of Logan’s messages in an Excel database. Some were previously redacted, but many others were duplicates of already released messages.

In some cases, the redacted messages are precisely selected, with one or two here and there shielded from view. In other places, entire exchanges between Logan and others are blacked out.

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How election experts sorted messages to give a clearer picture

The continued defiance has drawn the attention of professional election auditors who say they suspect the entire Maricopa audit was a sham concocted by Trump allies to sow distrust in the election.

Because the Senate is publishing Logan’s messages on a public website, anyone can view and analyze them. That’s what Larry Moore, the founder of Boston-based election technology company Clear Ballot Group, has done.

He's working with Benny White, a Pima County resident and a Republican, and Tim Halvorsen, the retired Clear Ballot chief technology officer.

The trio has compiled the various formats of messages submitted by Logan into a single, searchable Excel database — and it shows that thousands of messages remain concealed.

White said it seems clear that Logan is intentionally hiding messages that he doesn't want public, such as his involvement in accessing voting equipment in Georgia and Michigan.

“There are a lot of rows where the message content area is blank. Sometimes it’s a critical issue, because following is a comment like ‘Wow I didn’t know that existed.’ But you don’t know what the blank row was talking about,” White said.

Moore noted that many of the messages Logan redacted in December, then released unredacted after being challenged by The Republic, were simple messages with fewer than five words.

He suggested Logan was intentionally hiding messages and trickling them out to prolong the lawsuit.

“He is un-redacting junk,” Moore said. “Throughout this two-year process, there have been delays and obstruction and obfuscation of the data. And now that people are analyzing this, it is clear that he is selectively removing redactions that don’t mean anything. And what he is intentionally leaving redacted, I can only conclude, that the horse is buried there.”

White, Moore and Halvorsen spent hours using optical character recognition to convert the various document formats Logan submitted, allowing users to follow text message threads between Logan and cohorts during his work in Arizona.

The trio said they were interested in the project because they questioned the motives for Logan's work in Arizona and other states and sought the truth behind what set the audit in motion.

Moore and White say it is clear Logan was not an objective auditor because before the Senate selected him for the job, he joined a group of Trump-supporting election conspiracy theorists at a South Carolina property of attorney Lin Wood immediately after the 2020 election.

They have dug into the records hoping to show the audit was tainted from the start.

The Senate hired Cyber Ninjas in March 2021. While Logan’s report ultimately concluded that Joe Biden was in fact the winner of Arizona’s election, a host of characters tied to Trump encouraged Logan to show the election was compromised.

“I’m outraged at the corruption of government here,” White said, noting that the effort was ordered by former Senate President Karen Fann, R-Prescott, and current President Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert, and that people who participated in the audit are now in office, including Rep. Steve Montenegro, R-Goodyear, and Rep. Alexander Kolodin, R-Scottsdale.

White is a retired Marine pilot who went on to work for Delta Air Lines until 2005, when he earned a law degree and dove into election work, serving on a committee at the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office to revise the official state Election Procedures Manual, and with the Pima County Republican Party.

He became familiar with Moore, who launched an election audit company called Clear Ballot Group in 2009. The Boston-based company is among the largest vote-tabulation businesses in the nation, and its machines are certified to run elections in multiple states.

Clear Ballot has conducted nearly 200 election audits, including for four states after the 2020 general election, according to the company.

Fann had the chance to hire Clear Ballot, as the company submitted a proposal to scan and recount Maricopa County ballots for $415,000, but she chose Cyber Ninjas instead — a move that has cost Arizona and county taxpayers millions.

What is in the redacted messages to and from Doug Logan?

It's unclear what the Senate and Logan continue to conceal in the messages they have refused to turn over. But what they have released has included several embarrassing details of their work.

The Senate hasn't yet released an additional 40 messages, which The Republic’s lawyers say either should be made public or require a fuller explanation as to why they are protected.

But Logan is far more recalcitrant.

Messages between Logan and his company lawyer, Jack Wilenchik, are protected by attorney-client privilege, and those are exempted from the case. But only about 318 messages fall under that category — out of about 3,300 messages that remain redacted.

Many of the conversations still hidden include messages with Lambert, who participated in election challenges in Pennsylvania.

She communicated frequently with Logan regarding his activities in multiple states to challenge the results of the 2020 election.

Dozens of messages in the Logan-Pullen conversation are redacted over four days in late October 2021, the month after the audit report was released.

Twelve messages from subcontractor Gene Kern and seven messages with Logan's confidant Heather Honey remain redacted.

Then there’s the mysterious gap in messages from July 23-29, 2021.

Before and after this period, documents show Logan sent several messages a day with his team. And he received many as well, from people reaching out for updates or to offer mundane notes about operations.

Many events took place over this time that would have seemed to require Logan's attention.

• A July 23 thunderstorm caused a leak in the roof at the state fairgrounds building where the audit work had moved after leaving Veterans Memorial Coliseum. A spokesperson told the media that ballots were not damaged.

• Also July 23, audit liaison Ken Bennett was banned from the building during a tiff with other people working on the audit. Bennett eventually regained access and resumed his role.

• On July 26, Senate Republicans filed a new subpoena for the county’s routers and other election items, as well as a subpoena to Dominion Voting Systems.

• And July 29, workers at the fairgrounds loaded the nearly 2.1 million ballots onto trucks to return them to the county. And Cyber Ninjas released some information regarding who had funded its work.

Documents have exposed awkward details

The documents Logan has produced mix personal and work information.

As an example, Texan and election conspiracy theorist and Seth Keshel messaged Logan frequently during the audit. At one point, Keshel told Logan about issues he was having in his marriage.

He also asked about canvassing voters.

"So after the count, the ballots are all checked for legality I take it?" Keshel said in one message on June 12, 2021. "What about illegals, out of state residents, gays voting?"

Logan responded, without addressing the fact that sexual orientation does not affect the eligibility to vote: "That phase is indefinitely delayed … but hoping to kick that off soon," he wrote.

Logan intended to conduct a canvass of voters to see if people who cast ballots reported problems. Arizona lawmakers directed him not to do that, but a woman named Liz Harris who was working with Logan on the audit did it anyhow.

Harris was elected to the state Legislature in 2022 but then removed by her peers after a hearing in which she allowed a witness to make outrageous and false claims about elected officials and a bribery scheme with a Mexican drug cartel.

Other messages revealed a host of insider details about conflict, confusion and ineptitude in the audit, including that Logan was pleading with Trump's affiliates to get the ex-president to pay for the underfunded effort, and that he and state lawmakers concealed the audit participation of controversial inventor Jovan Pulitzer.

The contractors confided they didn't know Arizona election law when they were hired, struggled to pay bills and raise money, fought over what to report to the Senate, got deeply sidetracked by a film about their effort, and consistently were in touch with people who tried to concoct ways to keep Trump in office after his election loss.

Reach reporter Ryan Randazzo at ryan.randazzo@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4331. Follow him on Twitter @UtilityReporter.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Texts from Arizona 'audit' are kept secret by Cyber Ninjas' Doug Logan