Trump administration subpoenaing Arizona 2020 voting records, as Trump pushes to consolidate election power

The Trump administration has subpoenaed records related to the 2020 election in Arizona’s largest county, the state Senate president said Monday, the latest in a series of steps taken by the president to relitigate an election he lost and bolster the federal government’s authority over elections.

Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen, a Republican, wrote in a Monday afternoon social media post that last week he “received and complied with a federal grand jury subpoena for records relating to the Arizona State Senate’s 2020 audit of Maricopa County,” adding that “The FBI has the records.”

Petersen was responding to a post from President Donald Trump on Truth Social calling the development “Great!!!”

Jason Berry, a spokesperson for Maricopa County, said in a statement the county had not yet received a subpoena but would cooperate if it did.

The move comes just six weeks after the FBI raided an elections office outside Atlanta, seizing records related to the 2020 presidential election, as Trump continues to spread debunked conspiracy theories about voter fraud in that election.

Arizona’s Maricopa County — like Georgia’s Fulton County — has long been a centerpiece of those conspiracy theories, with Republicans alleging widespread fraud in the 2020 election without evidence.

Trump and his allies pushed Republicans in the Arizona state Senate to audit the election in Maricopa County — which former President Joe Biden narrowly carried in 2020 — but the review, like many others, found no proof of substantial fraud.

The Justice Department noted in a 2021 memo that such audits are “exceedingly rare” and warned that it was “concerned that some jurisdictions conducting them” could violate federal law.

“Maricopa County runs elections in accordance with the law,” Berry said in a Monday statement.

The president first seemingly publicly confirmed the expansion of the voting investigation earlier Monday, when he reposted an article by the right-leaning website Just the News, which reported that “FBI agents are receiving terabytes of electronic election data from Maricopa County.”

Berry is a spokesperson for the county board of supervisors, and the county board splits some election responsibilities with County Recorder Justin Heap. Judy Kean, a spokesperson for Heap, said his office had also not received a subpoena as of Monday afternoon.

Calli Jones, a spokesperson for Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, deferred to Maricopa County Elections — an office that consolidates some of the county’s operations — which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“At this time our office is also attempting to track down accurate information and remains committed to providing whatever support necessary to our counties to ensure they can stay focused and provide a secure and reliable 2026 election to voters despite antiquated systems and historic underfunding,” Jones said in a statement.

Heap, a Republican, sued Maricopa’s board of supervisors last month as part of a protracted dispute over election authorities in the county.

Heap won election in 2024 after successfully challenging then-Recorder Stephen Richer in a primary fueled in part by Richer’s vocal opposition to the president’s conspiracy theories about the election in the county and the post-2020 state Senate review.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, accused Petersen of “using his platform as Senate President to legitimize conspiracy theories that Arizona’s own courts and law enforcement have thoroughly debunked” in a Monday statement.

“What the Trump administration appears to be pursuing now is not a legitimate law enforcement inquiry,” Mayes said. “It is the weaponization of federal law enforcement in service of crackpots and lies.”

Mayes indicted 18 Trump allies in relation to the attempt to overturn the state’s 2020 election results two years ago, and while grand jurors ultimately opted against charging Trump, the indictment labeled him an unindicted co-conspirator and mastermind behind the alleged plot.

Trump has repeatedly threatened to “nationalize” elections ahead of the 2026 midterm elections in recent months despite the fact that the Constitution explicitly delegates election administration duties to the states, sparking concern from Democrats and bipartisan state election officials.

One source of worry is how the Trump administration is using the U.S. spy community to support his claims the 2020 election was rigged.

Trump has directed the Central Intelligence Agency and other U.S. spy agencies to share sensitive intelligence on the 2020 election with his former campaign lawyer, Kurt Olsen, who is using the material to hunt for fraud in that year’s vote, POLITICO has reported.

It is unclear whether Olsen, who Trump made a special government employee in the White House, has completed his work.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard participated in the raid in Fulton County, and the next day facilitated a phone call between Trump and some FBI agents at a local field office.

Her role in the Georgia raid raised alarm from Democrats and election experts, who noted that it is highly unusual for the ODNI to participate in domestic law enforcement activities. Officials working for Gabbard also obtained voting machines from Puerto Rico to study their susceptibility to hacks.

Gabbard has said neither she nor Trump applied any pressure on the FBI agents during the call, and asserted her office has broad authority to secure U.S. elections against foreign hacking threats. Top Democrats have shot back that the raid in Fulton County was based on a tip from Olsen that did not mention any foreign intelligence.

One administration official, granted anonymity to discuss an ongoing legal matter, said Gabbard was “not on the ground” in Maricopa but is still working with interagency partners on election integrity issues.

The Justice Department has also sued more than two dozen states for access to their voter rolls, insisting that redacted files — which omit voters’ private data, like driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers — are not sufficient.

The Department of Justice, the FBI and the FBI Phoenix field office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report misspelled Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen’s surname.