Ever since it conducted an audit of the 2020 election results in Arizona, Cyber Ninjas has been one of the most widely covered firms in the country. Now, an Arizona judge has handed down a hefty fine to the Florida-based firm.
According to The Hill, Maricopa Superior Court Judge John Hannah originally ordered Cyber Ninjas to turn over its public records to The Arizona Republic in August 2021. The records included emails and text messages.
The Republic had sued Cyber Ninjas in June 2021 for the records. The newspaper asked a judge to order $1,000 per day in sanctions against the cybersecurity firm until it produced the records.
As of Thursday, Cyber Ninjas still had not turned the records over, despite the order from Hannah. As a result, the judge imposed a $50,000 per day fine against the firm until the records are produced — 50 times greater than the Republic had originally requested.
“It is lucidly clear on this record that Cyber Ninjas has disregarded that order,” Hannah said, according to The Hill. “I don’t think I have to find Cyber Ninjas is not acting in good faith. All I have to do is find they are not complying, and their noncompliance is not based on good faith and reasonable interpretation of the order.”
Hannah formally found Cyber Ninjas in contempt of his August 2021 order and said he was not buying the plethora of excuses the firm had come up with.
“I think the variety of creative positions Cyber Ninjas has taken to avoid compliance with this order speaks for itself,” he said.
Hannah made his frustration with Cyber Ninjas known, saying he wanted to put the firm “on notice” and threatening to issue individual orders that name specific people at the firm if it does not comply.
In a separate article, The Hill reported the Maricopa County Elections Department released a report Wednesday that said Cyber Ninjas’ audit contained “faulty analysis” and “inaccurate claims.”
Even though Cyber Ninjas said its audit confirmed President Joe Biden’s victory in Arizona, the elections department took issue with some of the findings.
Specifically, the report said that Cyber Ninjas’ summary of its findings “inaccurately challenges the legitimacy of thousands of voters who participated in the November 2020 General Election and/or the validity of ballots counted and included in the official results.”
“Our analysis found that Cyber Ninjas made faulty and inaccurate conclusions about more than 53,000 ballots in 22 different categories,” the report said, according to The Hill.
As a general rule, people do not like to have their authority or integrity questioned. This could explain why, throughout the audit, it appeared the elections department may have been biased against Cyber Ninjas.
Election officials most likely did not want to be questioned, so a firm that questioned their processes would certainly ruffle some feathers. It could also explain why Cyber Ninjas became a hated entity on the left.
Democrats were happy that their candidate won, and therefore anyone who questioned the validity of this outcome represented a threat to them. While Cyber Ninjas’ intention was to ensure the integrity of the vote in Arizona, the left somehow twisted the narrative and suggested the firm’s goal was to overturn the election and put former President Donald Trump back in power.
Now, it is unclear whether any of these characterizations played a role in Hannah’s decision. Cyber Ninjas has ignored his order for months, and that comes with penalties.
However, it is certainly fair to wonder whether Hannah’s apparent disdain for Cyber Ninjas is based solely on the firm’s refusal to produce records, or if it could have originated long before that when the left began to demonize the firm.