Federal investigators last week sought and obtained records relating to the 2020 election in Arizona, the Republican leader of the state Senate said Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLate last week I received and complied with a federal grand jury subpoena for records relating to the Arizona State Senate\u2019s 2020 audit of Maricopa County,\u201d state Senate President Warren Petersen said in a post on X. \u201cThe FBI has the records. Any other report is fake news.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The FBI did not respond to a request for comment from NBC News.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Petersen\u2019s post was in response to a Truth Social post from President Donald Trump, in which he shared a report from the right-wing outlet Just The News that stated the FBI was secretly investigating the 2020 election in Arizona.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The development signals that the FBI\u2019s investigation into the 2020 election \u2014 which Trump falsely claims he won \u2014 extends beyond Fulton County, Georgia, where the FBI raided an elections hub in search of records and ballots earlier this year. Fulton and Maricopa counties are both solidly Democratic areas in key battleground states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unlike in Fulton County, though, the 2020 ballots cast and counted in Maricopa County were destroyed in accordance with the state’s records retention laws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Maricopa County Elections Department told NBC News on Monday that they had not received a subpoena \u201cbut will cooperate if that were to occur.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Petersen\u2019s social media post indicates that the FBI is seeking records compiled in the course of a controversial audit by an outside group called the Cyber Ninjas, which was hired by the Republican-controlled state Senate to conduct what they described as an \u201caudit\u201d of the 2020 election, including a hand-count of ballots. Petersen oversaw the Cyber Ninjas audit alongside Karen Fann, who was the state Senate president at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The messy, conspiracy-laden investigation in Arizona concluded that President Joe Biden had won the 2020 election in the state, and the company that ran the review shut down amid an expensive public records fight with a local newspaper, The Arizona Republic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those records highlighted problems with the investigation and made it clear that conspiracy theories about the election had infused the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLooks like basically our numbers are screwy,\u201d Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan wrote in a Sept. 13, 2021, text message obtained by The Arizona Republic days before they delivered their report to the state Senate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One document released through the litigation laid out plans to use microscope cameras and shine a \u201cUV-B and UV-A source\u201d on allegedly suspect ballots, for example, though election experts noted the plans failed to mention more likely issues, like how to handle a ballot that voted for more than one candidate for an office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In January 2022, the Maricopa County’s election department released a 93-page rebuttal of the review as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe November 2020 General Election was administered with integrity and the results were accurate and reliable,\u201d the report stated. \u201cThis has been proven through statutorily required accuracy tests, court cases, hand counts performed by the political parties, and post-election audits.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The report also states that \u201cnearly every finding included faulty analysis, inaccurate claims, misleading conclusions, and a lack of understanding of federal and state election laws.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, slammed the apparent investigation into her state in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat the Trump administration appears to be pursuing now is not a legitimate law enforcement inquiry. It is the weaponization of federal law enforcement in service of crackpots and lies,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ken Bennett, the former Republican secretary of state in Arizona who was the state Senate’s on-site liaison to the audit, told NBC News on Monday he had not received a subpoena, though he said he has retained records from the audit at his home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“If the FBI is looking for something other than the election Maricopa County was essentially done accurately, then yes, they’re going to be disappointed,” he said. “We found that Biden won Maricopa by 40,300 not 40,000.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bennett said Logan told him that the major donors paying for the audit wanted proof of fraud in Arizona so they could conduct investigations in other states. According The Arizona Republic, groups advancing voter fraud claims poured more than $5 million into the audit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The America Project, a nonprofit run by former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, paid $3.25 million to the Cyber Ninjas while a group founded by former Trump attorney Sidney Powell, Defending the Republic, invested $550,000. A group overseen by Michael Flynn, a former Trump national security adviser, also funneled nearly $1 million of the effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It’s people paying to support an effort that they want a specific result to come from that effort,” Bennett said. “I remember Doug telling me \u2014 oh, these guys want us to find something here, because then we’re going to go to five other states and do the same thing.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n