Maricopa County celebrated on Thursday evening after claiming vindication in the controversial audit of the 2020 election in Arizona's largest county.
"A monthslong hand recount of Maricopa County's 2020 vote confirmed that President Joe Biden won and the election was not "stolen" from former President Donald Trump, according to early versions of a report prepared for the Arizona Senate," The Arizona Republicreported Thursday evening, one day before the findings were scheduled to be released.
"The three-volume report by the Cyber Ninjas, the Senate's lead contractor, includes results that show Trump lost by a wider margin than the county's official election results," the newspaper noted. "The hand count shows Trump received 45,469 fewer votes than Biden. The county results showed he lost by 45,109."
The leak of the report came the same day Trump pressured Republican Gov. Greg Abbott to pursue something similar to the Cyber Ninjas audit in Texas.
The county announced the findings on Twitter, but warned that the 110-page report "is also littered with errors & faulty conclusions about how Maricopa County conducted the 2020 General Election."
Tim Steller, a columnist for the Arizona Daily Star, says the findings should still be discounted even though they confirmed the official outcome.