- Oct 17, 2011
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Documents that have surfaced over the past two years include correspondence describing the inner workings of a partisan review of the 2020 election by the Cyber Ninjas, as well as emails by Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, urging lawmakers to overturn President Donald Trump’s narrow defeat in the state.
The new rules will greatly limit the public release of lawmakers’ communications. State senators will not have to disclose any text messages sent on personal devices, even when dealing with state business. For lawmakers in both the Senate and the House, emails and other documents will be destroyed after 90 days — in many cases, well before members of the public know to ask for them.
“I think there’s no denying that the whole Cyber Ninjas case and the other aspects of how Arizona officials handled election issues are of great public interest, so it’s hard to imagine that they’re doing anything but trying to avoid that from coming up again,” said Gregg Leslie, a law professor and the executive director of the First Amendment Clinic at Arizona State University.
“It is one of the things that sets us apart from autocracies, that we require our public officials to be accountable to the people they serve,” [Heather Sawyer, American Oversight’s executive director] said.
The new rules will greatly limit the public release of lawmakers’ communications. State senators will not have to disclose any text messages sent on personal devices, even when dealing with state business. For lawmakers in both the Senate and the House, emails and other documents will be destroyed after 90 days — in many cases, well before members of the public know to ask for them.
“I think there’s no denying that the whole Cyber Ninjas case and the other aspects of how Arizona officials handled election issues are of great public interest, so it’s hard to imagine that they’re doing anything but trying to avoid that from coming up again,” said Gregg Leslie, a law professor and the executive director of the First Amendment Clinic at Arizona State University.
“It is one of the things that sets us apart from autocracies, that we require our public officials to be accountable to the people they serve,” [Heather Sawyer, American Oversight’s executive director] said.
