A GOP-led audit of the 2020 election results in Arizonas largest county found no evidence of widespread fraud , voting irregularities or miscounted ballots, according to a draft report of its findings reported by KJZZ , a Phoenix public radio outlet.

In fact, the audit recorded 99 additional votes for Joe Biden in Maricopa County compared to last years official count, and 261 fewer votes for Donald Trump.

GOP leaders are scheduled to release the findings of the review Friday afternoon, but the leak of the draft report has already rendered that announcement anticlimactic. The results are clear: Even an audit specifically commissioned and designed to bolster Trump and the GOPs baseless claims of fraud and malfeasance couldnt produce any evidence to support those assertions.

Was there massive fraud or anything? It doesnt look like it, Randy Pullen, a spokesperson for the audit, told KJZZ .

The draft report states that there were no substantial differences between the hand count of the ballots provided and the official canvass results for the county, according to KJZZ.

The Arizona audit, to be clear, was never a legitimate review. Its findings, whatever they ended up being, were never going to offer definitive proof of anything that did or did not occur during last years election. But that it couldnt produce something to back up Trumps claims is an embarrassing result for Arizona Senate President Karen Fann (R), who commissioned the review and for the litany of Republicans who flocked to Arizona to study the process, which broke nearly every rule of legitimate election audits, according to nonpartisan election officials who observed it in person.

Polls have shown that half of Republican voters believe Trumps lies that the Arizona audit would find sufficient evidence to help return him to office, an outcome that is constitutionally impossible. The audit was also the subject of intense interest on far-right online forums, where some users finally began to realize this week that the audit wouldnt live up to their hopes .

Trump, meanwhile, seemed unaware as of Thursday night that the audit hadnt found anything, judging by his excited statement about what the highly respected auditors and Arizona State Senate found out regarding the so-called Election!

The draft report suggests that the Cyber Ninjas audit will still seek to cast at least some doubt on the election. And Republicans in other states, including Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, are still pushing forward with plans to conduct similar reviews of their own 2020 election results. On Thursday, Texas election officials announced that new forensic audits a term Republicans essentially invented to describe these reviews would take place in four Texas counties. Its all but certain that those, too, will fail to find any evidence of widespread fraud, which legitimate audits and hand recounts of elections across the country have shown did not occur in significant fashion during last years contests.

If Trump and his supporters cant prove it here with the process they designed, then they cant prove it anywhere, Benjamin Ginsberg, a longtime Republican election lawyer, said on a conference call with reporters Thursday. And that should be a huge warning to the other state legislators who might think its a good idea to go down this path.