For too long, the activist media have monopolized the flow of information available to the American people, perpetuating lies that manipulate reality and force people to question what they know to be true. 

Take, for instance, a recent live interview with NASCAR driver Brandon Brown, celebrating his debut win at the NASCAR Xfinity Series competition, in which an NBC reporter knowingly, falsely stated that fans shouting “F**k Joe Biden” were actually chanting “Let’s Go Brandon.” 

While a seemingly banal story, it exemplifies the form of psychological control known as gaslighting — long a propaganda tool of authoritarian regimes — that is alive and well in Biden’s America, transforming what was once a free press into the Left’s personal news outlet. 

Perhaps the ultimate example of media gaslighting is the message that the 2020 presidential election was the “most secure” in our nation’s history, as the corrupt media, in concert with Big Tech and Big Government, repeatedly alleged there’s “nothing to see here.” 

Yet the truth about the 2020 presidential election is coming to light owing to the dogged persistence of resilient Americans at the grassroots level, despite ongoing opposition. 

The task ahead is to prove the statement that the election was fair is in fact false, and to solve the problematic issues surrounding U.S. election vulnerabilities, restoring Americans’ trust in the electoral process. Until states begin decertifying compromised elections, the Democrat-controlled media will continue to get away with spreading lies that keep the nation hostage and in a perpetual state of paralysis.   

America’s best hope lies in preserving free and fair elections. Today, the burgeoning movement to ensure election integrity has begun in Arizona’s Maricopa County.There, a three-month-long, historic forensic audit concluded in September, unveiling explosive evidence of voter fraud during the 2020 election and setting the tone and a high bar for other states seeking similar audits.    

Arizona Audit Reports Excessive Evidence of Vote Fraud

In July, preliminary findings of the Arizona Maricopa County Forensic Audit revealed substantial evidence of fraud during the 2020 presidential election, potentially shifting the state’s 11 certified Electoral College votes from Biden to Trump. 

The comprehensive review has comprised a full hand recount of nearly 2.1 million votes; a full forensic evaluation of the paper ballots and voting machines; and a meticulous analysis of voter rolls, voter history, and voter data patterns.

Early results outlined widespread discrepancies in ballot batch counts, as well as the mislabeling and mismanagement of ballot storage, including cut seals that were intended to ensure the validity of ballot batches. 

Additionally, according to the findings, hundreds of mail-in ballots lacked a chain of custody, images of envelopes with verifiable signatures were missing, and more than 74,000 counted mail-in ballots had “no evidence of ever being sent.”   

With the release of a three-volume final report — Maricopa County Forensic Election Audit Volume I: Executive Summary & Recommendations, Volume II: Operations & Methodology, and Volume III: Result Details — Americans finally have answers to what really happened in November 2020, gaining information that cannot be decried a “conspiracy theory.” 

Still, as more evidence emerges, suggesting that without a doubt the election was in fact rigged, what should have been the story of the century has been more widely covered and better understood by the international media than by the U.S. press. Why? 

Did Trump Really Win?

In his September 26 article “So Trump was right: the election was rigged. And our next one will be too,” British journalist Ron Liddle of the progressive Sunday Times writes of the “ripple effects” of the Arizona audit, largely unreported and grossly mischaracterized by pundits and lawmakers spanning the U.S. media and political spectrum as “flawed,” a “sham,” and a “disgrace to democracy.” 

“Soon the people will wake up to something more unpleasant and sinister,” warns Liddle, “that the last presidential election was a fraud. Rigged by big business, the labor unions, and more than anything, the media and the tech companies.” He continues, “if that election would have taken place in any other country it would have been called ‘unfree.’”   

Liddle, who is clearly not a Trump supporter, offers an assessment of the ramifications of the review wholly aligned with those of the former president, who, in the early hours of the day after the election, declared the race a “fraud” and an “embarrassment,” even as huge batches of votes were still being found and processed.

Addressing the nation on November 4, Trump recalled the utter chaos that ensued around 10:00 p.m. on election night, as polling centers across the country closed unexpectedly in the midst of counting votes, election workers pulled boxes of hidden ballots from underneath sheet-draped tables, and Republican poll watchers were refused entry to observe the election process.   

“We were winning everything and all of a sudden it was just called off,” said Trump. “Frankly, we did win this election. So, our goal now is to ensure the integrity for the good of this nation.” 

On November 4, between 3:00-4:00 a.m., ballot drops of tens of thousands of votes consistently marked for Biden slowly began to shift the map from red to blue. 

In The Immaculate Deception, Volume 1 of his distinguished three-part Navarro Report, election researcher Peter Navarro investigates the early morning vote surges in Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin. 

Navarro, who served as director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy under the Trump administration, notes that “an analysis conducted by the Voter Integrity Project of the New York Times publicly reported data on Election Day that showed several vote ‘spikes’ that were unusually large in size with unusually high Biden-to-Trump ratios. Such spikes or surges could well indicate that fraudulent ballots had been counted.”

Specifically, writes Navarro, “in Georgia an update at 1:34 AM on November 4th showed 136,155 additional ballots cast for Joe Biden, and 29,115 additional votes cast for President Trump.” “In Michigan at 3:50 AM on November 4 showed an update of 54,497 additional votes cast for Joe Biden, and 4,718 votes cast for President Trump…. In Wisconsin at 3:42 AM on November 4th showed 143,379 additional ballots cast for Joe Biden, and 25,163 votes cast for President Trump.”

At present, former President Trump continues to refuse to concede the race to Biden. 

Stop the steal: From April to June, thousands of volunteers and contractors with the Florida-based firm Cyber Ninjas gathered at Phoenix’s Veterans Memorial Coliseum to examine and recount ballots cast in Arizona’s Maricopa County. (Photo credit: AP Images)

All Eyes on Arizona

Spanning April to September, the comprehensive audit involved more than 1,500 vetted volunteers who devoted more than 100,000 hours to the process. 

On September 24, the auditors presented to Arizona Senate President Karen Fann and Judiciary Committee Chairman Senator Warren Petersen that as many as five times more votes than the number separating Biden and Trump were impacted by significant discrepancies.

Of the estimated 3.3 million total votes cast in the state of Arizona during the 2020 presidential election, 1,672,143 votes were tallied for Biden, and 1,661,686 for Trump. Biden “officially” led with a narrow victory margin of 10,457 votes. 

The auditors state in Maricopa County Forensic Election Audit Report, Volume III: Result Details that the most important audit finding was the discovery of “more duplicate than original” ballots. “Paper ballots are the best evidence of voter intent,” explained the auditors, “and there is no reliable evidence that the paper ballots were altered to any material degree.” 

Yet election-integrity expert Kurt Hyde argues that a more crucial finding is the county’s questionable handling of voter verification and the broken chain of custody for ballots. 

According to Maricopa County Forensic Election Audit Volume I: Executive Summary & Recommendations, “the Auditors were never provided Chain-of-Custody documentation for the ballots for the time-period prior to the ballots’ movement into the Auditors’ care.” 

As Hyde notes, “If there was no documented chain of custody for ballots since the election, how can anyone be sure that the paper ballots weren’t altered or the ballot box stuffed?”

What the auditors are sure of is that, as a result of the forensic review, tens of thousands of votes appear to be corrupted, with critical discrepancies including the following: 

• 23,344 ballots cast from voters’ prior addresses.

• 9,041 more ballots returned than received by voters.

• 5,295 voters that potentially voted in multiple counties. 

• 3,432 official ballot results do not match who voted. 

• 2,592 more duplicates than original ballots.

In addition, auditors found that files were missing from the election Electronic Management Server (EMS) system, a whopping 284,412 ballot images on the EMS were “corrupt or missing,” and communication logs appeared to be “intentionally rolled over,” resulting in the full deletion of election-related data on the EMS.   

Why Did the County Withhold Information?

The final report came after Maricopa County election officials for months refused to comply with legislative subpoenas requesting county routers, admin passwords, and communication logs from electronic voting machines. 

An investigation led by Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich found the county in violation of the law, resulting in Brnovich threatening to withhold state funds from the county should they not comply. While reaching a settlement with the Senate, the county has yet to turn over the physical election routers, which still have not been reviewed by auditors. 

In addition to the missing routers, also absent from the investigation was a canvassing phase. This aspect, while a part of the original audit design, was put on “indefinite hold by the Arizona Senate,” according to the auditors. Arguably, this decision was owing to threats by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) that voter canvassing violates statutes of the 1965 Civil Rights Act and a person’s right to privacy. 

Grassroots Canvassing Efforts

Not to be intimidated by the DOJ’s threats, concerned Arizonans have been leading a grassroots voter-canvassing effort since December. On September 8, Liz Harris, a one-time candidate for the Arizona House of Representatives and member of a patriot group unaffiliated with either the Maricopa County forensic audit or the Arizona Senate audit, reported to Steve Bannon’s War Room that in Maricopa County, “34.23 percent of people who were recorded with no vote said they had voted [i.e., “lost votes”], and 96,389 votes were from addresses where mail-in ballots could not have possibly been cast by the person to whom that vote was registered.”

Bannon, echoing Navarro’s dictum that “it’s the canvass, not the count,” reminded his program’s listeners that “a full forensic audit is tripartite. You have the ballots and the ballot analysis and the recount of the ballots…. The third part has to be a canvass.”

In May, DOJ Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division Pamela Karlan sent a letter to Arizona Senate President Fann addressing the DOJ’s concerns about the Republican-led audit in her state, accusing Fann of “potential non-compliance with federal laws enforced by the Department.”

The DOJ letter raised issues regarding the preservation and retention of election records under review by Maricopa County auditors and claimed inadequate safeguards were in place to protect those records. The letter also noted the potential for voter intimidation should auditors conduct a canvass to collect data about voter registration, including door-knocking to verify a voter’s address.

Fearless, Harris and other patriots set out to canvass a huge area comprising three Maricopa County precincts. Notably, Maricopa County is the fourth-largest in the nation by population and has more than two million registered voters. Harris told Bannon that, together with other volunteers, she went to the homes of registered voters and asked these basic questions:

• What method did you use to vote?

• Did you receive extra ballots?

• What did you do with those extra ballots?

• How many registered voters are supposed to be here, and how many actually voted?  

Upon completion of their investigation, the group reported an astonishing “173,104 lost votes and 96,389 ghost votes.”  

“Nine out of ten people thanked us for coming to their door,” said Harris. “The equivalent of the people we interviewed was larger than an average American city…. We canvassed all registered voters. We didn’t just go to the official record.” 

The attempt to canvass all two million-plus registered voters in Maricopa County is a huge undertaking, and the effort should be applauded. However, the manpower required to complete such a task is extensive and demands a professional team of auditors to ensure the integrity of the project. 

“People have to understand,” said Bannon, “this is about a line of inquiry. Is this imperfect? Absolutely it’s imperfect; Liz Harris is not saying it’s perfect. But it shows you directionally a line of inquiry that must be and will be drilled down on. We’re going to have canvasses and it’s going to blow the Left’s head up!” 

Of course, as Heritage Foundation Senior Legal Fellow Hans von Spakovsky noted in a recent interview with Newsmax, “election officials in Arizona should not dismiss this audit…. This is just the start of what needs to be done in Maricopa County,” he said.

Senate President Fann has called upon Attorney General Mark Brnovich to investigate the election anomalies. Brnovich has a duty and a responsibility to prosecute election officials who are found to be in violation of state voting laws.

Time to Decertify?

While the auditors reported “no substantial differences” existed “between the hand count of ballots provided and the official election canvass results for Maricopa County,” stunning discrepancies of mail-in ballots cast from unverified addresses, more ballots returned by voters than received, and records of voters casting ballots in multiple counties revealed significant and widespread irregularities that many claim warrant a decertification of the state’s 11 Electoral College votes for Biden. 

In response to the final audit report, former Missouri Governor and current candidate for the U.S. Senate Eric Greitens issued this strong statement: “Over 50,000 illegal ballots in an election separated by just over 10,000! Don’t listen to the mainstream media, liberals, and RINO’s spin on the Arizona Audit. Arizona must decertify! We MUST have forensic audits across the country!” 

Arizona State Senator Wendy Rogers (R), a staunch advocate for decertification who has toured numerous U.S. cities calling for full forensic audits across all 50 states, wrote on the social media platform Telegram, “Corrupt ballots should not count. Therefore, Arizona suffered a corrupted election. Recall the electors and #DECERTIFY.” 

To underscore the significance of the audit and other “crap going on” on his state, Brnovich harnessed the words of screen legend Gary Cooper from the 1952 classic Western High Noon, declaring “It’s high noon” in a recent Washington Examiner interview, i.e., time for Biden to pay his dues. 

Brnovich later tweeted, “There’s this window of opportunity, this key moment in history that if we don’t stand up now and protect the Constitution and rule of law, we’ll never get it back.” 

How to Decertify

Standing for the Constitution, Arizona Republican Representative Mark Finchem, a current candidate for Arizona secretary of state, revealed to The New American that “the audit was not a result of the [2020 presidential] election, it was an ongoing project that is low-hanging fruit,” adding that “the purpose of the audit is to be methodical, accurate, and complete, it’s not to be fast.”

On the topic of decertification, Finchem said, “When we [the legislators] are executing our duties as outlined in the U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 1, Clause 2, we have the authority to reclaim our electors.” He added, “while the Senate cannot act unilaterally to decertify the results, it can act in concert with the House. It has to be the entire legislature.”

There are 31 Republicans and 29 Democrats in the Arizona House, and 16 Republicans and 14 Democrats in the Senate.

Of the 31 Republicans in the lower chamber, noted Finchem, “10 or 12 are ‘constant conservatives’ — dependable, reliable conservatives — then we have 10-14 moderates, and the remainder are the selfish ones, who are willing to bargain with anyone to get their objective done, and they will side with the Democrats.”

Finchem believes that no matter what happens, the audit has awakened the American People. “Many have told me that their confidence is shaken because of what they observed and the facts that the formerly ‘free press’ refuses to acknowledge.” Continued Finchem, “Those who still possess and use critical thinking skills are asking serious questions rooted in known vulnerabilities of electronic systems. If anything, the call for audits in other states is, in my mind, something that we should have been doing for some time. It is an oversight activity long overdue.”

Unpacking the Bipartisan Aims of the Maricopa Audit

Despite caustic criticism from the Democrats, including Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, who claim the historic audit spearheaded by Arizona Republicans and the Florida-based firm Cyber Ninjas was “sloppy, insecure, and opaque,” the goal of the review was by nature bipartisan and should not be viewed as an exclusively Republican effort.

Speaking to The New American in a phone interview, Ken Bennett, former Arizona secretary of state and audit spokesman and liaison to the state Senate, said, “[the audit] aims to confirm in the minds of Arizonians and all those here in Maricopa County that their elections have integrity, and that if we don’t have that we will lose our country.”

Bennett stressed that “We [Americans] cannot lurch every four years from one party to the next party, as each one says the election is stolen. The point of the audit is to save our country.”

Statistics appear to support the former secretary of state’s remarks. According to a June Rasmussen Poll, 55 percent of Americans are in favor of full forensic audits of U.S. election results, demonstrating that voters spanning the political spectrum are seeking restored confidence in the integrity of the U.S. election process.

From the beginning of the audit process, Senate President Fann has maintained that the purpose of the audit was to uncover and report the truth to the American people, providing “careful and accurate answers” that “address voter concerns about the integrity of the certified results of the 2020 general election.”

Fann appears to have accomplished her goal, but she will need assistance from the Arizona Legislature to enact true reform of the current election process to continue to ensure the preservation of free and fair elections in this country.

Hope Springs Eternal

The truth is the evidence of widespread fraud remains overwhelming, and the confidence remains low among Americans concerning the U.S. election process. 

However, to offer a glimmer of hope, as the Arizona auditors state boldly in their report, “The preamble to our Constitution reminds us that our nation is always pursuing greater perfection, seeking to establish ‘… a more perfect Union’ so that we can ‘…secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.’” 

To that end, not only the auditors but all citizens who have engaged in the review process have pressed Americans to continue due diligence in “determining what areas [of] legislative reform may enhance our current process,” doing so for the purpose of improving election integrity, so it, too, becomes unquestionably “more perfect.”

Annalisa Pesek is a writer, editor, and librarian. She joins The New American after spending nearly a decade in New York publishing.