No election files were deleted during the Arizona audit. The claim that Maricopa County wiped a database before handing over its voting equipment collapsed within days in May 2021 when the audit’s own digital forensics contractor admitted he had recovered every file in question after properly configuring the storage array his team had misread.1Arizona Mirror. Audit Official Says He Recovered Files, Undercutting Claim County Officials Deleted Them Independent fact-checkers rated the deletion claim false, and a second round of deletion accusations in the audit’s September final report was rebutted point by point by the county.
How the Claim Started
On May 12, 2021, the Twitter account for the Arizona Senate’s audit liaison posted that Maricopa County had “deleted a directory full of election databases from the 2020 election cycle days before the election equipment was delivered to the audit,” calling it “spoliation of evidence.” The same day, Senate President Karen Fann wrote the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors alleging that “the entire database directory from the D drive” of a machine labeled “EMSPrimary” had been deleted and that the main Election Management System database was missing.2Reuters. Maricopa County Database Was Not Deleted
Three days later, former President Donald Trump amplified the allegation in a written statement: “The entire Database of Maricopa County in Arizona has been DELETED!” He called the alleged deletion illegal.3NBC News. Company Conducting Arizona Election Audit Backtracks on Deleted Database Claim
Why the Files Looked Missing
Maricopa County rejected the allegation immediately. On May 13, Board of Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers called it “outrageous, completely baseless and beneath the dignity of the Arizona Senate” and demanded a retraction.4Maricopa County. Chairman Sellers Statement on Senate Audit Allegations
On May 17, the county’s Elections and Recorder’s IT departments published a technical memo explaining what the auditors had actually seen. The audit team was using R-Studio Data Recovery Technician to scan the server’s RAID storage array but had not properly reconstructed the array’s partition schema. As a result, files appeared as zero bytes or carried deletion markers that actually indicated corrupted data retrieval, not actual deletion. The April 12, 2021 “modified” dates that alarmed the auditors were metadata timestamps generated when Microsoft SQL services updated file properties during the routine shutdown of the server for transport.5Maricopa County Elections Department. Technical Response Letter With Exhibits
The memo also explained that the county’s Dominion Election Management System used three primary database files and, per standard Dominion procedures, those files had been moved to a backup drive in February 2021 to make room for the upcoming March jurisdictional election. The SQL log files remained on the primary server and were present when the equipment reached the Senate.5Maricopa County Elections Department. Technical Response Letter With Exhibits Nothing had been destroyed. The files were in a different location, and the auditors’ software was reading the drive incorrectly.
The Auditors Retract
The day after the county released its memo, the claim unraveled publicly. On May 18, 2021, Ben Cotton, founder of the digital forensics firm CyFIR and a subcontractor on the audit, told Arizona senators at a public hearing that he had recovered every file in question. “I’ve been able to recover all of those deleted files, and I have access to that data,” Cotton said, adding that he had done so by “properly configuring the hard drive where the data was stored.”1Arizona Mirror. Audit Official Says He Recovered Files, Undercutting Claim County Officials Deleted Them Once the storage array was set up correctly, the data was where it had always been.
Cotton acknowledged the problem stemmed from a lack of understanding of the county’s “multi-layered storage system” and conceded the contractors “might have just looked in the wrong place.”6Arizona Republic. Arizona Audit Senate Meeting on Maricopa County Recount Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer said Cotton’s statement was an admission that the audit team had “jumped to a conclusion, without researching it.”1Arizona Mirror. Audit Official Says He Recovered Files, Undercutting Claim County Officials Deleted Them The county pointed out that the auditors “recovered” the files one day after reading the county’s explanation of where to find them.3NBC News. Company Conducting Arizona Election Audit Backtracks on Deleted Database Claim
Senate President Fann continued to describe the files as “deleted but recovered,” but said she would not refer the matter to law enforcement because “we never said there was any wrongdoing.”1Arizona Mirror. Audit Official Says He Recovered Files, Undercutting Claim County Officials Deleted Them The audit’s own liaison, Ken Bennett, a former Republican secretary of state, went further and said the issue was “not a finding,” suggesting the files may simply have been “duplicated somewhere else.”7Fox 10 Phoenix. Maricopa County Rejects Allegations of Deleting Election Databases
What Independent Fact-Checkers Found
PolitiFact rated Trump’s statement that “the entire Database of Maricopa County in Arizona has been DELETED” as False.8PolitiFact via Austin American-Statesman. Donald Trump Claim Arizona No Proof Database Deleted Reuters concluded the database was not deleted.2Reuters. Maricopa County Database Was Not Deleted Snopes and USA Today reached the same conclusion. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors called the original claim “demonstrably false.”
The Second Round of Deletion Claims
The accusation returned in a different form on September 24, 2021, when Cyber Ninjas and CyFIR presented their final audit findings. Cotton this time accused county election staff of “intentionally deleting files and logs,” pointing to purged EMS databases, deleted files on scanner machines, and the deletion of user logs on specific dates in February, March, and April 2021.9Maricopa County. Correcting the Record Report1012 News. Arizona GOP Audit: County Denies Claims Staff Deleted Data
Maricopa County again denied the claims. Its formal “Correcting the Record” review stated that all 2020 general election files had been “preserved and archived” and that the county kept 26 daily backups of the EMS server, with the final backup created on November 13, 2020, after tabulation was completed. The county classified the deletion claims as “Inaccurate” and identified 7 false claims, 23 inaccurate claims, and 9 misleading claims across the contractors’ reports.9Maricopa County. Correcting the Record Report
What the Audit Actually Said About the Votes
The underlying vote count held. Cyber Ninjas’ own draft report showed Joe Biden gaining 99 additional votes beyond the certified count and Donald Trump losing 261 votes compared with the official tally. Fann conceded the final totals were “close” to the official Maricopa County count. County officials said the report was “littered with errors & faulty conclusions.”11CNBC. Trump-Friendly Cyber Ninjas Audit of Arizona Votes Still Shows Biden Won
What Happened to the People Behind the Claim
Cyber Ninjas did not survive the aftermath. When the Arizona Republic and the transparency group American Oversight filed public records requests, the firm refused to comply. On January 6, 2022, a Maricopa County judge found Cyber Ninjas in contempt and imposed $50,000-per-day fines until the records were produced.12Arizona Republic. Arizona Judge Finds Cyber Ninjas in Contempt, Orders Daily Fines13Washington Post. Cyber Ninjas Ordered to Pay $50,000 a Day in Sanctions CEO Doug Logan shut the company down effective January 1, 2022, laid off employees, and told a court he was transferring materials to a new entity called Akolytos. He testified he had “no plans to release” the records.14American Oversight. Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan Answers Questions in Lawsuit for Audit Records
Courts sided with the records requesters. The Arizona Court of Appeals ruled that records held by the Senate’s contractors qualified as public records and that the Senate could not evade disclosure by outsourcing public duties.15Arizona Courts. Fann v. American Oversight, Court of Appeals Opinion The American Oversight case settled on April 19, 2023, with more than 100,000 pages of documents eventually produced.16American Oversight. American Oversight Lawsuit Comes to a Close Those documents showed Logan admitting in a September 2021 text message that “basically our numbers are screwy” and that he could not verify the roughly 70,000 tally sheets produced by volunteers.17Arizona Republic. Arizona Will Not Have to Pay Legal Fees in Cyber Ninjas Case
Both Logan and Cotton later became targets of criminal investigations in other states. In Michigan, the state Attorney General’s office petitioned for a special prosecutor to investigate allegations that the two “broke into the tabulators and performed ‘tests’ on the equipment” in Oakland County in early 2021.18Arizona Mirror. Senate Audit Leaders Doug Logan and Ben Cotton Are Facing a Michigan Criminal Probe Logan was also investigated in Georgia as part of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s broader probe into alleged 2020 election interference, which examined the alleged breach of voting machines in Coffee County.19Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Cyber Ninja CEO Doug Logan Faces Criminal Probe