GOP-backed 'inventor' reveals Arizona audit cost $9 million — in video filmed on a private jet

On Friday, Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, a Texas-based “inventor” who developed the controversial technology being used by Arizona Republicans in their partisan “audit” of the Maricopa County ballots from 2020, posted in a video from a private jet that the total cost of the whole project was $9 million — including $2 million in security costs alone.

While the audit itself allegedly totals $9 million, Arizona Senate Republicans committed $150,000 of that in direct taxpayer money.

The audit, billed as a means of securing “election integrity,” is an effort to validate former President Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. It has relied on chasing a number of conspiracy theories, including searching for bamboo fibers to try to prove ballots were forgeries from China.