Maricopa County 2020 records taken by FBI, Arizona lawmaker says : NPR
Then-Arizona State Senate President Karen Fann, right, is joined by then-Sen. Warren Petersen before a 2021 hearing on reviewing the 2020 election results in Maricopa County.
Ross D. Franklin/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
Ross D. Franklin/AP
The president of the Arizona state Senate says he complied with a subpoena he received last week seeking documents from a flawed review of the 2020 election in Maricopa County.
“Late last week, I received and complied with a federal grand jury subpoena regarding records relating to the Arizona State Senate’s 2020 audit of Maricopa County,” Warren Petersen, a Republican, wrote on X Monday. “The FBI has the files.”
The FBI did not immediately respond to NPR’s request for comment.
Jason Berry, a spokesman for the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, told member station KJZZ that she had not received a subpoena.
“Maricopa County is conducting elections in accordance with the law. We have not received a subpoena at this time, but we will cooperate if that were to happen,” Berry said.
Berry also confirmed that 2020 ballots were destroyed, in accordance with state law, which mandates how long election materials should be kept.
The Maricopa County Recorder’s Office also said it had not received a subpoena and referred questions to the state Senate president.
A discredited 2020 review
President Trump narrowly lost Arizona in the 2020 election, and Maricopa County – the state’s largest – has become a hotbed of baseless election fraud claims from Trump and his allies.
In 2021, the former state Senate president, also a Republican, launched an election overhaul, hiring to lead it a Florida-based cybersecurity company that had no prior election experience. Election experts have largely discredited the review, calling it shoddy and partisan. Yet the review still confirms Trump’s loss in the county.
The news from Arizona follows the FBI’s late January seizure of 2020 election materials in Georgia’s Fulton County. This affidavit supporting this seizure was based on debunked allegations.
After the raid in Fulton County, many election officials in swing states Trump lost in 2020 told NPR they wouldn’t be surprised if their offices were similarly targeted by federal law enforcement.
“It wouldn’t surprise me at all,” Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, said when asked about the possibility in January. “Because there’s never really been a problem with election administration in America, except for the fact that Donald Trump is lying about it. That’s the No. 1 problem in this country with election administration.”
KJZZ’s Wayne Schutsky and NPR’s Miles Parks contributed reporting.
