(heart beating)
KLEPPER: Last week, I traveled to a sweltering Arizona,
where Republican state senators are auditing results
of the 2020 election in a giant arena
next to an actual carnival.
Sure, there's already been two audits and a recount
and it's 101 goddamn degrees out,
but there are still men like this
ready to throw their support behind election integrity.
I've been here all week, uh,
and I'll be here until the audit's done, is my plan.
So this-- What's going on right back here is
the most important thing going on in our country right now.
What do you have there on your hip?
Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum.
There has been word that antifa and BLM may be coming in,
so they're, uh, trying to be careful and, uh...
-and secure the premises. -Have you...
Have you seen any signs of antifa?
You guys have probably heard about the carnival
that's going on here. There's a little concern
about whether or not, uh, that would provide, uh,
those kind of folks, uh, an opportunity to come in,
try to infiltrate and get access.
So there is some fear that BLM might meet
behind a Tilt-A-Whirl, organize,
-and then bum-rush the situation. -U-Uh...
Bad people can do bad things.
I'm not gonna say what they may try to do.
KLEPPER: Outside of possible antifa carneys,
which was laid out in official documents
outlining potential security threats,
what's the harm in one more recount?
I know that it's comical to watch what's happening here
in Arizona, but I think that it is also important to note
that this is really dangerous to our democracy.
And you know what? We saw how dangerous
the postelection misinformation was.
This is a group of people who are clearly partisan.
It is headed by a company
that has no auditing or election experience.
And they're making up the rules as they go along.
So who's running the audit?
Cyber Ninjas.
Did you say "Cyber Ninjas"?
I did say "Cyber Ninjas."
Is it run by a 12-year-old boy?
Uh, it sounds like it, right? (chuckles)
KLEPPER: While the Cyber Ninjas' website
looks like the invitation to my ninth birthday party,
we must not judge audit companies by their splash page.
Well, you give it to the pros. Let the pros handle this.
These are not pros.
Well, they're cyber ninjas.
That takes some amount of training, I assume.
Their firm has nothing to do with audits or elections.
Well, uh, maybe they're new-ish to it.
How many audits have they done?
-N-None. -They've never done an audit?
No.
Well, I mean...
give 'em a wide berth, right?
-(stammers) -First job.
-(laughs) -You want to root-- Sometimes you make some mistakes
with your first job. I remember my first job.
-I burned a lot of hamburgers. -You know...
-And I worked at a TJ Maxx. -(chuckles)
There are a lot of Arizona voters
who are very, very concerned about this,
and I don't think they like the idea of their ballots,
um, their election being in the hands of these rookies.
KLEPPER: Turns out the audit has had some issues
in the trust department,
starting with Cyber Ninja's conspiracy theorist CEO,
an auditor who attended the January 6 insurrection,
and mysterious UV lights used to look
for Chinese bamboo in paper ballots.
Really.
To help clear the air,
I talked to John Brakey and Ken Bennett,
who are inside working on the audit.
There's been so many bizarre stories
going on through the media.
You can have, uh, some pretty farfetched ideas on both sides,
and what we're doing is simply proving or disproving
as many of those as we can.
Speaking as somebody on the outside,
this feels like it's just feeding
into conspiratorial thinking.
-We're myth-busters. Okay? -(chuckles) -Great.
We're doing things we think are foolish
but people believe it's real.
What is this I hear of a UV light?
-There-there was a UV light... -Oh.
...that was being used to, uh,
supposedly check for watermarks in the ballot.
I want to follow up on this.
Bamboo?
Bizarre, huh?
That's because Southeast Asia has--
uses bamboo in their paper, supposedly.
Okay? We're myth-busting.
But are you looking for traces of bamboo
-using a UV light? -We're looking for everything in there.
-So that's a yes? -Uh, we're looking to disprove
that it is not there.
Some people believe
-that paper from outside... -Yeah.
...of the authentic ballot paper
that should have been part of the Maricopa audit
got introduced into the system
and might be the paper
on which 40,000 people cast illegitimate votes.
All Chinese ballots are on bamboo?
-Yeah. -Is it because soy sauce would be too obviously racist?
Oh, my goodness.
Is there a chance people believe this
because people add fuel to the fire by elevating this
and-and therefore letting that
-be part of the conversation? -Then what do we do?
If-if we validate that something they think might have happened
didn't happen, then we're not throwing fuel on the fire.
Are you looking into the Hungarian vector?
-I didn't know about that one. -What's the Hungarian vector?
It's a bullshit thing I just made up that sounds cool
and a little bit spooky.
I was fortunate enough to see the operation firsthand,
and the people led by the Cyber Ninjas
were definitely counting and observing.
But there is still one thing
that can at least temporarily derail this audit:
teenagers.
We've known from the very beginning
that there's some high school graduations coming in
in, uh, two weeks.
So we'll have to step aside for about a week
while the graduations occur.
You don't have a place to count the ballots in two weeks?
-No. -No. Just for one week, we're gonna shut down.
We'll secure the ballots.
And then when the graduations are over,
-uh, we'll come back and-and finish... -This is not a joke.
I know it's not a joke. But you want us to trust you,
but you're like, "We're gonna lock the ballots in there
"and then let a bunch of teenagers come through
-"for a week... -No, we're not gonna lock them in there.
-and then we'll start counting again”? -No, no, no, no. Now...
-Now, that is not a case at all. -Secure the ballots. Right.
-Sorry. Yep. No, I got it. -Come on, let's get serious here.
-No, it's serious. Let's be serious. -This is
-a very serious subject. -It's very serious.
-Okay, so it's not a joke. -It's not a joke.
Let's go back to the bamboo talking.
But it's not a joke.
Until we settle the very serious bamboo situation,
you can find me in a place that's run by professionals
not attempting to thwart our democracy,
the other carnival.