Has a government spy plane been circling Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix to monitor an audit of Maricopa County ballots from the 2020 presidential election?
Air traffic maps do show a plane flying in the Phoenix area near the site of an unprecedented recount of ballots from November’s presidential election. But the Phoenix Police Department confirmed that it was a police plane conducting business unrelated to the recount.
"We have nothing, zero, zilch to do with that," Maggie Cox, public information sergeant for the department, told the AP. The department’s planes are "called on for many things," Cox said, but the election audit has not been one of them.
The false surveillance claim appeared on websites that have previously spread election-related conspiracy theories.
The recount has been contentious. Cyber Ninjas, the company hired to do the audit, initially refused to release its policies and procedures for re-tallying by hand the 2.1 million ballots in Maricopa County, where President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump.
