Arizona Republic: “The Arizona Senate is continuing its fight to keep secret nearly 3,000 emails and text messages sent by lawmakers and others that relate to the Maricopa County election audit, their lawyer told a judge Wednesday. The Senate turned over thousands of pages of communications on Tuesday after ordered to do so by two judges. But the Senate also provided a log of approximately 2,900 messages that were withheld or redacted because the Senate does not believe turning them over is required under the state Public Records Law. Among those are most, if not all, of the communications between lawmakers who ordered the unprecedented election audit and Cyber Ninjas, the Florida company hired to conduct the audit.”

“That means the Senate will fight to prevent the disclosure of anything Senate President Karen Fann or other Republicans who ordered the audit have written to Cyber Ninjas or the various subcontractors on the audit. Langhofer has previously argued, unsuccessfully, that Cyber Ninjas and the other contractors are not public officials and therefore not subject to the Public Records Law, which makes nearly all communications among elected officials public documents in Arizona. But two Superior Court judges and an Appeals Court panel have said the contractors records are subject to the Public Records Law, and the Arizona Supreme Court is listening to the Senate’s appeal of those decisions. Now, Langhofer is arguing that the records should remain private because of ‘legislative privilege,’ which would mean they are protected from such disclosure. ‘After all, the entire premise of this case is the vendor is functioning as the Legislature,’ Langhofer said. ‘If we are going to treat the vendor as a Legislature, then its communications with the Legislature are part of the legislative privilege.'”