An Arizona judge on Tuesday ordered election “audit” contractor Cyber Ninjas and its CEO, Doug Logan, to answer questions under oath from American Oversight regarding the company’s failure to turn over documents related to the Arizona Senate’s partisan election review. 

In the order, Judge Michael Kemp of the Arizona Superior Court in Maricopa County cautioned that failure to appear at depositions scheduled for Jan. 27 could result in sanctions and potentially a civil arrest warrant. 

Logan previously failed to appear at a scheduled Jan. 5 deposition in American Oversight’s lawsuit seeking the release of records from Arizona Senate’s discredited review of Maricopa County’s 2020 election results. On Tuesday, the court also ordered Cyber Ninjas and Logan to pay $1,000 as a penalty for Logan’s failure to appear earlier this month. 

The court’s order comes just a week after American Oversight filed an emergency motion to compel Cyber Ninjas and Logan to appear for depositions in the case. That motion was filed amid increasing concerns that Logan and Cyber Ninjas may be failing to preserve records from the partisan and conspiracy-fueled review. 

“As much as he might like to walk away from the dumpster fire he helped create, Doug Logan is not above the law,” said Melanie Sloan, American Oversight’s senior adviser. “We look forward to deposing him on the 27th, and if it takes an arrest warrant to ensure the public gets the full story of the ‘audit,’ then so be it.” 

The Arizona Senate is legally obligated to preserve records from the “audit,” including those held by its contractor, Cyber Ninjas. Arizona courts have repeatedly ruled that relevant documents in the custody of Cyber Ninjas are public records that must be turned over to the Senate for release under the state’s open records law.

According to text messages released to the Associated Press, Logan told Arizona Senate President Karen Fann on Jan. 3 that he planned to “liquidat[e] all of the Cyber Ninjas assets.” Logan further told Fann that Cyber Ninjas has no intention of satisfying its court-ordered obligations to produce public records but instead will “end up defaulting on the public records cases,” referring to the lawsuits filed by American Oversight and the Arizona Republic. 

Today’s order is available here, and more information about American Oversight’s investigation of the Arizona election review is available here.