Trump's Arizona audit ‘made up the numbers’ — and got caught by election experts

The harshly-criticized Cyber Ninjas audit of the 2020 election in Arizona's Maricopa County suffered further blows to its credibility when a damning new report was released on Friday.

"The circus-like review of the 2020 vote commissioned by Arizona Republicans took another wild turn on Friday when veteran election experts charged that the very foundation of its findings — the results of a hand count of 2.1 million ballots — was based on numbers so unreliable that they appear to be guesswork rather than tabulations," The New York Timesreports. "The organizers of the review 'made up the numbers,' the headline of the experts' report reads."

At stake are thousands of ballots, The Arizona Republicreported.

"The conclusions are based on a review of 40 ballot boxes, which the Senate for the first time broke down by number, batches and various types of tallies. The analysts found the hand count was short by nearly 16,000 ballots, or roughly one-third of the total ballots contained in the boxes," the Arizona newspaper explained.

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat running for governor in 2022, released a statement following the report.

"It was clear from the start that the Cyber Ninjas were just making it up as they went," Hobbs said. "I've been saying all along that no one should trust any 'results' they produce, so it's no surprise their findings are being called into question. What can be trusted are actual election officials and experts, along with the official canvass of results."

Also on Friday, Arizona Republic correspondent Jen Fitfield reported Senate President Karen Fann provided false information in her audit presentation.