Instead of testifying to Congress, Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan went on a right-wing podcast
Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan refused to testify before the U.S. House Oversight Committee Thursday morning about the self-styled “audit” he led for the Arizona Senate, choosing instead to spend two hours as a guest on a right-wing podcast hosted by a fellow election conspiracy theorist who is being sued for defamation.
“I mean, the current question is how many times was I thrown under the bus?” Logan joked about the congressional hearing he skipped to the hosts of Conservative Daily.
As Logan spoke to podcast hosts Joe Oltmann and Max McGuire, Senate “audit” liaison and former Secretary of State Ken Bennett was testifying to the congressional committee to defend the controversial election review. The committee also heard from Maricopa County supervisors and election experts.
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Oltmann gained notoriety for a baseless allegation he previously made against a Dominion Voting Systems executive that the company’s ballot-counting machines were rigged to ensure Trump lost the election. That executive, Eric Coomer, has filed several defamation lawsuits over Oltmann’s unfounded claims that he was a member of “antifa” and conspired to change election results.
Both Oltmann and Logan also appeared in the conspiracy theory film “The Deep Rig” which was riddled with falsehoods about the 2020 election and was directed by a man whose previous work claimed aliens were behind 9/11.
Logan was heavily involved in efforts to overturn election results in Michigan and he provided information to U.S. senators that they could ostensibly use to reject presidential electors from battleground states that Biden won. And he spread election disinformation on social media in the weeks after the election. In that conspiracy theory film, which was produced by the primary funder of the “audit,” Logan declared that the Central Intelligence Agency was behind claims that the 2020 election was fair.
‘I can’t tell you if this is fraud’
The two-hour discussion, titled “Cyberninja’s (sic) CEO Tells Congress to Fork Off and Joins US Instead,” focused on a range of topics, including Logan’s faith, the audit, a fake version of the audit report and calls from right-wing extremists to decertify the election because of what the “audit” concluded.
Logan spoke openly about witnessing what he called “anomalies” after the 2020 election that he claimed the “mainstream media” was not covering, saying that this is what got him into “election integrity work.”
“It didn’t make logical sense,” Logan said of the “anomalies” of the 2020 election.
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Prior to being hired by the Arizona Senate to conduct the ballot review of the Maricopa County election, Arizona Mirror discovered Logan had been an advocate for “Stop the Steal” content on his now defunct Twitter account, retweeting known misinformation peddlers such as Ron Watkins and Bobby Piton.
Logan has repeatedly refused to answer questions from the Mirror and other journalists about his Twitter account or his advocacy of lies about the election.
But he told the podcast that, by Nov. 14, 2020, he was meeting with a group of people to work on “election anomalies” in South Carolina. This confirms earlier reporting by Talking Points Memo in which conspiracy theorist Lin Wood said Logan was at his property in South Carolina to discuss election fraud investigations. Wood’s organization, Fight Back, donated $50,000 to the Arizona “audit” efforts.
Lin Wood says that the planes that hit the twin towers and the Pentagon on 9/11 were fake CGI. pic.twitter.com/H8amh8luzp
— The Republican Accountability Project (@AccountableGOP) October 2, 2021
After that, Logan said he didn’t come home until Christmas Eve and worked on election fraud investigations in Georgia. Logan was also involved in the failed attempt to prove election fraud in Antrim County, Mich., where he was listed as an expert witness.
Maricopa County ‘audit’ response slams claims as false and misleading
When the conversation turned to the findings that the “audit” made about the Maricopa County election, Logan claimed that there were over 23,000 “suspicious ballots,” but demurred on the question of whether there was any fraud.
“I can’t tell you if this is fraud or if it is not fraud. What I can tell you is that it is highly suspicious,” Logan said of the audit report’s assessment of mail in ballots.
Maricopa County in its response said they have been unable to substantiate any of the claims on the 23,000 mail in ballots Logan deems “suspicious,” adding that Cyber Ninjas used a commercial database instead of the United States Postal Service or National Change of Address report to confirm a person’s address, making Logan’s analysis unreliable.
A large portion of the discussion centered on the concept of decertifying the 2020 election, something Logan was not keen on.
“Suggesting we should decertify is like launching a nuke,” Logan said, drawing criticism from the hosts.
Logan: Cyber Ninjas team member wrote fake draft report
The “audit” report explicitly did not conclude there was election fraud, and did little more than suggest possible changes to state laws governing how elections are conducted. But a fraudulent draft version of the report was published by Gateway Pundit, a right-wing clearinghouse of conspiracy theories and fabricated stories, that alleged Logan and the other auditors found fraud and called for the election to be decertified.
Logan said that someone on his “audit” team wrote the counterfeit draft report, but did not say who it was. Oltmann, the show’s host, admitted that he released that version of the report online.
“Are you ready for the left or other people to use the same burden of proof to use it against you?” Logan said to Oltmann, adding that they must have “absolute proof” and that they are not there yet for decertification, something legislative attorneys have said is not possible.
Logan pushed for Oltmann and his viewers to wait for Attorney General Mark Brnovich to investigate, and said that the Arizona Senate is in the process of sending more information to the AG.
“Let’s pray for the AG, let’s pray that he does what is right,” Logan said. “Send him letters, send him emails, encourage him to do what is right.”
Oltmann, who has a history of using violent rhetoric, had some different thoughts on the matter.
“The backlash from the American people if (Brnovich) doesn’t do the right thing is going to be a snowball, that I’m not sure rolling down that mountain will not turn into something that none of us want, and that is some sort of kinetic behavior by Americans saying enough is enough,” Oltmann said, adding that it may result in “tar and feathering.”
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