Then-Arizona state Senate President Karen Fann, right, is joined by then-Sen. Warren Petersen prior to a 2021 hearing on a review of the 2020 election results in Maricopa County.
Ross D. Franklin/AP
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Ross D. Franklin/AP
Arizona’s state Senate president says he has complied with a subpoena he received last week seeking records from a flawed review of the 2020 election in Maricopa County.
“Late last week I received and complied with a federal grand jury subpoena for records relating to the Arizona State Senate’s 2020 audit of Maricopa County,” Warren Petersen, a Republican, wrote on X on Monday. “The FBI has the records.”
The FBI has not immediately responded to NPR’s request for comment.
Jason Berry, a spokesperson for the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, told member station KJZZ it hasn’t received a subpoena.
“Maricopa County runs elections in accordance with the law. We have not received a subpoena at this time but will cooperate if that were to occur,” Berry said.
Berry also confirmed that 2020 ballots were destroyed, in compliance with state statute, which directs how long election materials must be kept.
The Maricopa County recorder’s office also said it hadn’t 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 — became a hotbed for baseless election fraud claims by Trump and his allies.
In 2021, the previous state Senate president, also a Republican, initiated a review of the election, hiring to run it a Florida-based cybersecurity firm that had no prior experience in elections. Election experts widely discredited the review as shoddy and partisan. Yet the review still confirmed Trump’s loss in the county.
The Arizona news follows the FBI in late January seizing 2020 election materials from Georgia’s Fulton County. That affidavit supporting that seizure relied on debunked claims.
After the raid in Fulton County, numerous election officials in swing states Trump lost in 2020 told NPR that they would not be surprised if their offices were similarly targeted by federal law enforcement.
“Wouldn’t surprise me at all,” said Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, when asked about the possibility in January. “Because there’s never been anything really wrong with election administration in America except for the fact that Donald Trump lies about it. That’s the No. 1 problem in this country when it comes to election administration.”
KJZZ’s Wayne Schutsky and NPR’s Miles Parks contributed reporting.
