On November 9, an Arizona Appeals Court declined to grant the request of private corporation Cyber Ninjas Inc. to prevent the Arizona Republic, a Gannett owned publication, from forcing them to turn over their private communications
Cyber Ninjas Inc., a private corporation retained to serve as the primary vendor to audit voting equipment and ballots cast in the Maricopa County election in November 2020, sought relief from Superior Court Judge John Hannah’s order that it turn over copies of public records that it possessed.
Jack Wilenchik of Wilenchik & Bartness appealed the decision.
“These courts have refused to recognize that a public record must actually be public—meaning it must be owned by the government, much less in its possession. Ordering a private company to produce its own records to the government violates the 4th and 4thAmendments inter alia,” he said in an email. “The Court’s decision also opens up every single employee of the government to being sued on a public records request, because they are all ‘custodians’ of public records in the court’s view.”
Following the AZ Appeals Court decision, Law.com reported on the case.
The Arizona Senate initiated the audit and retained Cyber Ninjas, who then hired multiple private companies to assist in the audit, according to court records.
In June, the Arizona Republic newspaper submitted a public records request to Cyber Ninjas to review documents relating to the audit, but the company did not produce any records to the newspaper’s request.
Phoenix Newspapers Inc. filed a statutory special action under Arizona’s PRL (Public Records Law), claiming that Cyber Ninjas is in sole possession of audit-related public records because of its contract with the Senate. Senate President Karen Fann and other Senate officials were identified in the special action.
Cyber Ninjas moved to dismiss the complaint, but Hannah denied the request and ordered it produce copies of the public records relating to the audit.
The vendor claimed it could not be subject to suit under the public records law because it is not a public entity.
“Cyber Ninjas argues that the logic of the superior court’s order would open the files of all government contractors to public inspection. We need not decide the extent to which the PRL applies to businesses that contract with the government to provide ordinary goods or services that government regularly purchases for the public,” Cruz wrote on behalf of the court. “Contrary to Cyber Ninjas’ contention, our ruling does not mean that construction companies and office-supply vendors will have to rush to establish new ‘public records’ departments.”
Yesterday, after hearing the case, the “non-partisan” Maricopa Superior Court Judge John Hannah ordered the Cyber Ninjas firm to pay a $50K per day fine until it turns over records from their review of the Maricopa County forensic audit to The Arizona Republic, a leftist publication owned by Gannett.
Shortly after the judge’s decision was made, it was announced that Doug Logan’s Cyber Ninja operation was shutting down. Doug Logan refuted the reports about Cyber Ninjas shutting down, calling them “misleading.”
Fox 26 News Henry spoke with Doug Logan. Here is their report who told them the reports about his company shutting down over the judge’s ruling are “misleading” and that the company’s decision to shut down had nothing to do with the court ruling this week in Arizona.
The Florida company was hired to run the Arizona Senate audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest county. Maricopa voted Democrat for the first time since Harry Truman after World War II. It must have been Joe Biden’s charisma? Or maybe it was fraud?
The media attacked the Florida firm mercilessly for running the investigation on the questionable results in Maricopa County.
The audit found evidence of alleged illegal activity and over 700,000 suspect ballots issues. An Arizona judge fined Cyber Ninjas $50,000 a day for noncompliance with an August order to turn over audit-related records to the far left Arizona Republic.
Doug said the company paid off many of its creditors but was still in debt. In fact, Cyber Ninjas laid-off workers in January and made the decision to shut down last year. Logan said his employees were all paid before they were let go.
According to The Hill, in June 2021, the Arizona Republic sued Cyber Ninjas and the state Senate for records and asked for $1,000 a day in sanctions against the company.
Publications and individuals frequently utilize FOIAs to obtain information from a government or federal agency, but we are unfamiliar with the practice of newspapers forcing individuals to release personal communications to them or judges allowing them to do so.
The Hill also reported that on Aug. 24, 2021, Judge Hannah ordered the Cyber Ninjas to turn over public records, including emails and text messages, among others, to the Arizona Republic.
In his Thursday ruling, Hannah found Cyber Ninjas in contempt of that order.
Maricopa Superior Court Judge John Hannah is listed as “non-partisan” on the Ballotpedia website.
So, how “non-partisan” is Judge Hanna?
The “non-partisan” judge has a long record of donating to ActBlue, a donor site for Democrat candidates and radical leftist groups, organizations, and causes.
Here’s a look at the “non-partisan” judge’s donor record on the FEC.gov website, including US Senator Kristen Sinema and US Rep. Greg Stanton.
Judge Hannah made the maximum individual donation allowed by law to anti-Trump Democrat US Senator Krysten Sinema in 2017.
But there’s more…
David Bodney of Ballard Spahr, a law firm that represents the Arizona Republic, aka AZ Central, is the same law firm that represents the Biden regime in multiple radical cases. They also represented Biden’s former boss, Barack Obama.
Given Judge John Hannah’s record of supporting anti-Trump Democrats, is he really the best person to be sitting on the bench in this case that involves the Cyber Ninjas, the #1 enemy of the Democrat Party in Arizona? And why is Biden’s law firm representing the Gannett-owned publication suing for Doug Logan’s communications? It certainly appears, at least on the surface, as though Doug Logan certainly has an unfair advantage in the fight to protect his personal communications.
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