Arizona 'audit' backers hurl accusations and excuses to justify another 'dog and pony show'

Backers of Arizona's partisan "audit" of the 2020 election are hurling accusations and excuses after their efforts failed to turn up evidence to overturn Donald Trump's election loss.

The audit report showed President Joe Biden actually won the state by more votes than previously believed, and the right-wing Trump supporters who pushed the months-long probe are turning on one another and flinging more conspiracy theories to explain away their failure, a local reporter told The Daily Beast's "Fever Dreams" podcast.

"The deep state and the politically correct lawyers and RINOs of the GOP suppressed this," said Arizona Mirror reporter Jerod MacDonald-Evoy, explaining the new round of excuses audit backers are offering.

Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, a right-wing inventor who promised technology that would detect voter fraud by analyzing folds in ballot paper, complained the "deep state" intervened after his imaging equipment wasn't even mentioned in the final report -- but he couldn't identify who had sabotaged his contribution.

"That's the big question — is it not?" Pulitzer told The Daily Beast

Conservative businessman Joe Oltmann, who baselessly claimed to have overheard a voting systems employee talking to antifa activists, accused Arizona's state Senate of conducting a "dog and pony show," and alleged QAnon mastermind Ron Watkins, shared a video suggesting that GOP state Sen. Wendy Rogers -- one of the audit's biggest backers -- was sabotaging the investigation.

Some fervent Trump supporters have already moved on to promising a "real" report from audit operators Cyber Ninjas that will decertify Biden's win, and MacDonald-Evoy said media outlets probably should start assigning reporters to the "audit" beat.

"I think it's almost never-ending, especially with 2022 coming up," MacDonald-Evoy said.