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The Cyber Ninjas Still Trying to Steal Arizona for Trump Are Terrified of ‘Antifa’

The “Stop the Steal”-linked group accidentally published a top-secret security brief outlining their concerns.
A reporter watches the Maricopa County ballots cast in the 2020 general election being examined and recounted by contractors working for Florida-based company, Cyber Ninjas, who was hired by the Arizona State Senate at Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoeni

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Things are getting even stranger down in Maricopa County, where an audit of Arizona’s 2020 election results is underway. 

The “Stop the Steal”-linked firm Cyber Ninjas, which has been hired by the Arizona GOP-led Senate to conduct the audit, is using UV lights among other technology to detect any possible election fraud. (They haven’t found any yet, and it’s been a week.) On Thursday, the group accidentally published its top-secret security brief that raised concerns about a firebombing attack from “Antifa.” The document has since been taken down. 

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Meanwhile, the “Crazy Times Carnival'' is kicking off Friday at the Arizona State Fairgrounds in Phoenix, incidentally the same approximate location where the audit is taking place. The carnival, which will offer such rides as “Puppy Roll,” “Alien Abduction,” and “Circus Train,” is being eyed with growing suspicion from the audit’s most ardent supporters, who fear it could be a Trojan horse for an “antifa” incursion. 

Given these “vulnerabilities,” the Arizona Senate and Cyber Ninjas agreed that the audit should receive additional security from the National Guard and the Department of Public Safety. Arizona’s governor denied their request. 

Sidney Powell, the ex-Trump lawyer and Stop the Steal proponent who has dabbled in QAnon circles, forwarded a post to her nearly 500,000 followers on Telegram urging them to bombard the Arizona State Fair with phone calls and force them to shut down the carnival. 

“We already saw Craigslist ads recruiting ‘protesters’ earlier this week,” the post warned. “Don’t underestimate the lengths they’re willing to go to stop this audit.”

“Carnival’s in town?” someone replied. “I bet their [sic] democratic Antifa BLM activists in disguise.” 

The original poster had also attached screenshots from an old Craigslist “ad” seeking “actors” to pose as anti-Trump protesters for an event at the Phoenix Convention Center, located about three miles from the Veterans Memorial Coliseum where the carnival and audit are taking place.

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Wild conspiracy theories about Crazy Times Carnival have also been swirling on 4Chan all week, hyping the possibility of a “false flag” mass shooting or bombing at the carnival, which would take place with the goal of disrupting the audit. One person found it suspicious that the Carnival event was hosted by WordPress.

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The Crazy Times Carnival also comes up in the Cyber Ninjas security plan, which identifies five security vulnerabilities, including a “public event” in the southwest corner of the grounds of the Veterans Memorial Coliseum, by a six-way intersection.

One particularly grim scenario envisioned by Cyber Ninjas involves “Antifa” firebombing a nearby chemical and tank storage farm and then blocking traffic in the six-lane intersection near the carnival and preventing police and fire trucks from responding to the scene. 

“Such a condition would compound distractions, causing a significant safety concern to the small carnival operating in the South-West of the Fairground Campus, and allowing near unmitigated access and entry/breach to hostile actors,” according to the report. They also raised concerns that militias could swing by the audit and be a disruptive presence. 

The election audit is highly controversial because it’s grounded in the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. He’s said to be taking a keen interest in the goings-on in Maricopa County, inquiring about its progress multiple times a day, the Washington Post reported