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Cyber Ninjas agree: Joe Biden won Arizona

The results of a messy, months-long Republican effort to re-examine the results of the 2020 election were unveilved to the state Senate Friday.
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The third-party contractors hired by Republicans to review the the 2020 election results in Maricopa County, Arizona, agree that President Joe Biden won, according to a draft of their final report.

In fact, Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based cybersecurity company, concluded that Biden had won 360 more votes than the county had awarded him in the official count.

The company was scheduled to publicly present its report to the GOP-controlled state Senate, which authorized the effort, Friday afternoon.

A draft of the company's final report was shared with NBC News by the county ahead of that unveiling, though experts say the inexperienced contractors' processes should cast significant doubt on the endeavor.

The "draft report from Cyber Ninjas confirms the county's canvass of the 2020 General Election was accurate and the candidates certified as the winners did, in fact, win," Maricopa County tweeted Thursday night, after a draft leaked to news outlets.

The full findings are scheduled to be released Friday in the state Senate.

Republican lawmakers and other officials in Arizona have challenged Biden's victory there, targeting Maricopa, the state's most populous county.

Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, a Republican who ordered the election review, did not respond to a request for comment Thursday. She told the NBC-affiliate KPNX that "we will all find out tomorrow" about the contents of the report, but said "there is a lot of information you all need to see."

While the draft agrees with the official results, it also casts aspersions on much of the process.

Experts told NBC News Friday that the report betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding of election administration and even existing Arizona laws.

"It just reinforces that they don’t understand the election ecosystem in Arizona, nor did they understand the very basics of election administration nationally," said Liz Howard, senior counsel of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.

Howard was appointed by Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs to monitor the review and spent weeks in Phoenix observing the Cyber Ninjas do their work.

Former President Donald Trump on Friday criticized media coverage of the draft report, mischaracterizing its findings and calling on the state's attorney general to further investigate the election results. Since November, Trump has pushed the lie that the election was stolen from him.

Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers, a vocal critic of the review, said in a tweet Thursday the results "should be the end of the story. Everything else is just noise. But I'm sure it won't be."

He added: "I hope those holding on to their anger for the past ten months will see the truth and put their energy into supporting the democratic process instead of trying to tear it down."