WASHINGTON - When the U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee holds a hearing today to probe the election "audit" in Arizona, the CEO of the company hired to conduct that controversial review will be absent.
Doug Logan, CEO of Cyber Ninjas, was asked to testify but told committee officials ahead of the hearing he is refusing to participate, according to a news release from the panel Wednesday.
Logan's unwillingness to testify comes after he and his company repeatedly refused to produce documents sought by the Oversight Committee, which is controlled by the Democratic majority in the House, as part of its investigation into the Arizona election review.
A spokeswoman for the House Oversight panel declined to comment on whether the committee will subpoena Logan, a step that is within the committee's authority.
The result of the months-long review of ballots in Maricopa County was the same as the official outcome: President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump in the county and in Arizona.
But election experts across the country have expressed alarm that the ongoing unsubstantiated claims of voting impropriety have undermined confidence in elections across the country.
"Consistent with Congress's constitutional authorities, the committee is investigating the extent to which your company's actions have undermined the integrity of federal elections and interfered with Americans' constitutional right to cast their ballot freely and to have their votes counted without partisan interference," wrote Democratic Reps. Carolyn Maloney of New York and Jamie Raskin of Maryland in a letter last month directing Logan to appear before their panel.
Today's hearing will include testimony from two Republicans on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors who opposed the "audit," Chairman Jack Sellers and Vice Chairman Bill Gates.
Other witnesses will include a pair of election experts: David Becker, founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, and Gowri Ramachandran, senior counsel at The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School.
A final witness, invited by the panel's Republican members, will be Ken Bennett, a former Arizona secretary of state who served as a liaison between the Arizona state Senate and the companies hired for the ballot review
Bennett replaces an earlier invited GOP witness, Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, an MIT-trained engineer and entrepreneur who has a history of promoting discredited and debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, according to the Arizona Mirror.
Meanwhile, former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens visited Arizona this week to signal his continued support of debunked conspiracies around the 2020 presidential election.
Greitens, who is running for U.S. Senate, posted videos on Twitter of him with an Arizona state legislator to tout the "first, quality audit of the 2020 election."
"The mainstream media, and the left, are terrified," Greitens said, "as are weak, woke RINOs."
The Missouri Independent is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization covering state government and its impact on Missourians.