Bennett says he’s regained control of audit Twitter account

The official Twitter account for the Senate’s election audit is back under audit officials’ control after spokesman Ken Bennett handed control of the account to unknown volunteers.

For much of the time since the audit began, its Twitter account raised eyebrows with inflammatory tweets and outlandish statements, for example, referring to Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a vocal critic of the audit, as “Kooky Katie” and insisting that it represented “the greatest audit in the history of the galaxy.”

Bennett, a spokesman and “liaison” for the audit, has told reporters over the past week that the Twitter account was being run by “kind of a committee” of volunteers and that it had “kind of gone down a road I’m not supportive of.” He said he’d been working on reining in the person or people running the account, but had been having trouble retaking control of it.

On Wednesday, Bennett told media pool reporters that the Twitter account was back under audit officials’ control. He wouldn’t say who is now tweeting from the account, and again would not say who controlled it before.

“I’ve been telling people for days we were working on that issue, and that’s resolved now,” Bennett said. “I’ve told you before who it was. It was volunteers. And that’s still accurate.”

Bennett is now referencing the audit’s Twitter feed as a source for official statements. After Hobbs said observers representing her office found a router connected to a server on the audit floor at Veterans Memorial Coliseum, Bennett on Wednesday responded to questions by pointing to a statement on the audit feed stating that the router’s WiFi wasn’t enabled, and that audit officials are willing provide access and passwords if an investigation is needed. 

The audit’s Twitter feed didn’t say why the router was connected to the server, and Bennett said he didn’t know why either.