Arizona 'auditors' Cyber Ninjas are defying court orders to hand over internal text messages

Cyber Ninjas, the shady firm behind the Trump-backed "audit" in Arizona, is now defying a court order to hand over its internal text messages.

The Daily Beast reports that Cyber Ninjas still hasn't delivered any of the documents it has been ordered to turn over after being successfully sued by the Arizona Republic newspaper and the transparency group American Oversight.

Instead, writes The Daily Beast, Cyber Ninjas has issued vague statements saying it could hand over some documents at some point.

"While CNI [Cyber Ninjas, Inc.] intends to produce documents out of goodwill and its commitment to transparency, by sending this communication CNI does not concede the existence or scope of any involuntary legal obligation to do so," Cyber Ninjas attorney Jack Wilenchik wrote to a court last week.

The Daily Beast speculates that Cyber Ninjas simply does not want to hand over communications that will demonstrate the group is loaded with pro-Trump conspiracy theorists.

"From its outset, the group has displayed hard partisan leanings, with members of the 'audit' team promoting voter fraud conspiracy theories and claiming to check ballots for bamboo fibers, which they claimed would indicate that a ballot had been fraudulently shipped from China," the publication writes.

Read the full report here.