Throughout a rally in Arizona final month, Trump ad-libbed a diatribe about Maricopa’s routers that indicated he had no earthly thought what laptop routers truly are.
“In case you bought these routers, what that can present,” Trump asserted, calling on random individuals named “Wendy” and “Sonny” and “Kelly” to surrender the routers. “And so they do not need to surrender routers, they do not need to give ’em. They’re combating like hell.”
Trump’s router meltdown appeared to riff off yet one more conspiracy principle that Italian satellites by some means altered the county’s vote counts in favor of Joe Biden. In fact, Maricopa computer systems have been by no means related to the web, as one Maricopa board member, Invoice Gates (no, not that Invoice Gates) explained on CNN final week.
The entire effort is a basic Trump formulation—plant a completely bogus seed, legitimize it with a supposed investigation, and let your delusional cult following do the remainder. Identical to Trump instructed Justice Division officers final December as he urged them to lie about potential election fraud, “Simply say the election was corrupt + depart the remainder to me and the R. Congressmen.” The DOJ officers declined to take action.
However again right here on earth, what’s related to the routers in Maricopa County are providers that don’t have anything to do with the elections. As a substitute, they embrace a ton of delicate details about personal residents and native regulation enforcement communications.
“Maricopa County repeatedly has addressed the numerous safety dangers posed by producing its routers,” stated a Maricopa County lawyer, Thomas Liddy, in a 5-page letter that accompanied the board’s curt response. “Particularly, offering these routers places delicate, confidential knowledge belonging to Maricopa County residents—together with social safety numbers and guarded well being data—in danger.”
Liddy additionally defined that producing the routers would make the county Sheriff Workplace’s “inner regulation enforcement communications infrastructure extraordinarily weak to hackers, be they legal cartels, terrorists, or international powers.”
Gee, that senate GOP request is sounding kinda dangerous and misguided and, properly, simply plain silly. However it’s completely on model for Trump and his Republican bootlickers.
The letter from Maricopa board chair Sellers concluded, “It is time for all elected officers to inform the reality and cease encouraging conspiracies. Launch your report and be ready to defend any accusations of misdeeds in courtroom. It is time to transfer on.”
In brief, Arizona’s audit wars proceed to tear the social gathering aside within the state’s largest county.