So much for fraudit day! Last week, Arizona officials were bracing for the imminent release of the Cyber Ninjas big report on their recount of Maricopa County’s 2020 general election ballots. Word broke late Monday that the report was going to be delayed because the dog ate their homework three of the five members of the auditing team tested positive for COVID-19.

That’s according to the State Senate President Karen Fann, the Republican leader who contracted the Cyber Ninjas to spend Arizona taxpayers’ dollars on the Big Lie. She said that Cyber Ninjas Chief Executive Officer Doug Logan told her that two of the five-person audit team “are quite sick.” CNN asked if any of the team had been vaccinated, but Cyber Ninjas did not respond to their request for comment. Fann said that “a portion of the draft report” would be available Monday. So rather than the full report they were supposed to deliver, there is a portion of the rough draft of the report. Sure.

“In addition to the illnesses, it wasn’t until Thursday that the Senate received the images of the ballot envelopes from Maricopa County and are hoping to have those analyzed as soon as possible to incorporate those results into the final report,” Fann said in a statement. Maricopa County officials dispute that the images were delayed at all, saying they had long ago provided those ballot envelope images and that they had to resend them. They must have gotten lost in the mail.

Fann continued, saying “The Senate legal team will meet Wednesday to start reviewing the draft report, and when the remainder of the draft is submitted, the Senate team will hold another meeting to continue checking for accuracy, clarity, and proof of documentation of findings. Once that is complete, the final report will be presented to the Senate Judiciary Committee and findings released to the public.” So, maybe by the 2024 president election we’ll have the groundbreaking Cyber Ninjas’ fraud-proving report.

Or “several weeks” if Ken Bennett, the Senate’s liaison with the audit team, is to be believed. He told CNN that a Senate team will spend “days or weeks” to verify the report and “checking for accuracy.” They want to “spread fact, not rumor,” and emphasized that what they’re waiting on is just the draft and not ready for the public and that, really, they need to check it first. He told CNN that he expects there will be an “adjustment to how the meeting will be conducted on Wednesday,” given the “quite sick” fraudit team. But they’ll definitely be verifying whatever partial information the team might be able to provide.

That all suggests that the extensive prebuttals from Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and Stephen Richer, the Republican county recorder in Maricopa County, did the job of rising the bar for whatever it is the Cyber Ninjas cook up. Each report detailed the masses of process problems and suspicious activities in the fraudit, covering ground Fann and the Ninjas now have to clear up.

Richer addressed his prebuttal report to “Arizona Republicans,” reminding them that he’s been one of them for years, having voted for Trump and volunteered for Republican political campaigns. “I am human. If you prick me, I bleed,” he wrote. “And if you consistently defame me and the people in my office, I eventually fight back.” Fighting back for him, and protecting his employees, led Richer to oppose the fraudit and to continue to speak out against it.

He cited the Cyber Ninjas’ inexperience in conducting audits in his report—the firm had never dealt with elections until the Big Lie surfaced—and the fact that Trump allies have almost entirely funded the fraudit to the tune of $5.6 million. Richer also noted the flaws in the procedures the frauditors used, and their mishandling of ballots.

Hobbs’ prebuttal warned the general public that “any ‘outcomes’ or ‘conclusions’ that are reported” from this report should be disregarded because of the clearly fraudulent origins and procedures in this investigation. She also called on the state’s political leaders to “proclaim that the 2020 General Election was fair and accurate.”

As this drags out, the Arizona Court of Appeals has ordered the Republican-led state Senate to turn over all the records it has related to the hiring of the Ninjas. Fann said she is going to appeal this decision, which is looking more and more like another delaying tactic.