by Erin Burnett
CNN
Aug 7, 2021
In an interview with CNN's Kate Bolduan, Maricopa County GOP official Bill Gates talks about the threats election officials have received for refusing to push Donald Trump's big election lie and support the baseless Arizona election audit.
[Erin Burnett] "Check your six." That's a message from one Republican Arizona State Senator threatening members of her own party to watch their backs, for refusing to push the Big Lie and support the baseless Arizona election audit. State Senator Wendy Rogers sending out a fundraising email saying "Personally, I think they should be in jail. Let me put it this way: I'm Air Force and Sonny Borrelli is a Marine. I can tell you that when I landed my C-141 and 200 Marines would exit out the back ... well, you wouldn't want to be in the way. We are coming for you. You'd better check your six."
One of those members of the Board of Supervisors that they are talking about, Bill Gates, actually also received this orange prison jumpsuit in the mail today after she sent out that email calling for them to be put in jail. OutFront now, Bill Gates, the Republican Chairman of Maricopa County's Board of Supervisors. Thank you for coming in, Bill. You've been dealing with this sham audit for months now, but now being threatened and warned by other elected Republicans to watch your back. Can you just talk to me about the level of threats that you have been receiving, especially now?
[Bill Gates] Yeah, unfortunately the threats continue and they are not simply organic. They are being driven, unfortunately, by members of the Arizona State Senate and other Republicans across the country. We have received phone calls into our offices, the Board of Supervisors, our Staff, saying that our families are going to be slaughtered, and threatening us to stop standing up for the good election workers of Maricopa County.
[Erin Burnett] I want to offer some context here. You are now being targeted because you are standing up against the sham audit altogether. But specifically, because you are refusing now to hand over the routers used by the county's election division, which the State Senate has tried to subpoena multiple times. The same thing that former President Trump and his supporters are also calling for. Let me play this for folks.
[Former President Donald Trump] They don't want to give up the routers! They don't want to give them. They are fighting like hell -- Why are these commissioners fighting not to give the routers?
[Mike Lindell] We're going to pull the packet captures out of the routers and then we're going to have a cyber guy, he'll read it, and he'll go "here's what happened. Computer I.D. -- BOOM. Here's who did it. Here's the attacker. Here's the attackee.
[Erin Burnett] Now, importantly, this is a wild and baseless conspiracy theory that voting machines in your county were connected to the Internet on election day and somehow, Italian satellites were utilized to change votes from Trump to Biden. Can you lay out once and for all what you know about these routers -- it sounds ever crazy when I ask it, but I do want to ask it -- what you even know about these routers, and why you will not turn them over.
[Bill Gates] Yes, so here's the issue. This all comes down to the question of whether the machines used in the November 2020 election were connected to the Internet, and THEY WERE NOT. We had two independent auditors come in, the Board of Supervisors voted for this, and they established that these machines were not connected to the Internet. Furthermore, we have provided logs pursuant to these subpoenas from the Arizona State Senate that if the Cyber Ninjas knew what they were looking at, they would see that these logs establish that these machines were never connected to the Internet. But they continue to push forward asking for the routers. Just so your viewers understand, the reason that we're not turning over these routers, is because they basically would provide a blueprint if they got into the wrong hands of the information systems at Maricopa County. Now why is that an issue? Well, we have a lot of personal information of our citizens on those routers, but more than that, actually if this got into the wrong hands, it would provide information on sensitive law enforcement activities, law-enforcement personnel, that could put these operations at risk. And it's not just Maricopa County, because we share these databases with law enforcement across the state. So this could literally threaten sensitive law enforcement activities across the state of Arizona if we were to turn these routers over.
[Erin Burnett] But still, the threats come in, these elected officials know this or could know this very easily, but do not, and you and your family now remain in danger. Bill Gates, thank you for coming on.