FBI Subpoenas Election Audit Records From 2020 Presidential Race in Arizona

The FBI has obtained election audit records from Maricopa County, Arizona, following a grand jury subpoena, as part of its efforts to relitigate the outcome of the 2020 presidential contest, despite multiple reviews of that race demonstrating that no widespread fraud occurred.

In a rare but by no means impossible outcome, Joe Biden, the Democratic Party nominee for that year’s election, defeated then-incumbent Republican President Donald Trump in the Grand Canyon State. Trump went on to allege that his loss in Arizona and other states was the result of fraud, though he never produced any evidence to back that claim.

In 2021, responding to multiple conspiracy theory-driven allegations of fraud, state Republican lawmakers approved a review of Maricopa County’s election results.

The audit was conducted by Cyber Ninjas, a firm with no prior election auditing experience and run by an ardent Trump supporter who has promulgated many of the same false election fraud claims pushed by the president.

The review was rife with gaffes and missteps. At one point, auditors asserted they had discovered county officials had deleted relevant electronic files relating to the election result, only to walk back that claim when it turned out they had simply not looked in the location where said files were actually placed. The audit also sought to confirm multiple unfounded conspiracy theories, going so far as to inspect ballots for traces of bamboo in hopes of proving they had originated from China. (No such ballots were found.)

Following six months of “investigations,” the audit found no evidence of widespread fraud affecting the election’s result.

On Monday, it was reported that the FBI had acquired the records related to that review, after the agency obtained a grand jury request. Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen (R) has complied with the request, he said, and handed over the records to the FBI last week.

Trump celebrated news of the documents being handed over. “Great!” he wrote in a Truth Social post, sharing an article about the action from a far right news source.

That article falsely claimed the administration had seized actual election records. In fact, the subpoena only sought records relating to the audit, and Maricopa County officials maintain they have not provided the FBI with actual voting data.

“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,” a spokesperson for the county said.

Still, some observers believe the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) intend to scour the Cyber Ninjas audit for any evidence of fraud — whether real or manufactured — as a means of interfering with the 2026 midterm races.

“I think this is very deliberate. I think it’s part of a concerted campaign on the part of the White House to undermine confidence in elections, to challenge results that they don’t like in 2026,” said Lawrence Norden, vice president of elections at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, speaking to The Washington Post about the subpoenaed files.

The retrieval of the documents from the Cyber Ninjas audit comes just weeks after the Trump administration obtained 2020 election records in Fulton County, Georgia. Notably, the affidavit the FBI relied on to seize those documents left out key findings from state investigators regarding the outcome of that election, and included fraud claims that have long been debunked.

Following the seizure of records from Fulton County, election experts similarly sounded alarm bells over that action, questioning whether the administration’s endgame was to find ways to interfere with the midterms.

Like Arizona, Trump also lost Georgia to Biden, with the Democratic former president picking up another state that has typically voted for Republicans in the recent past. But those shifts in voting patterns do not indicate that any fraud occurred; rather, they signal a changing, more “purple” electorate within both jurisdictions.

State officials in Arizona panned the FBI retrieval of election files from the audit, anticipating that the administration would use the results to promote more falsehoods about the 2020 results.

“Recent efforts to relitigate the 2020 election are founded on conspiracy theories and raise serious concerns,” Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) said, adding:

Voters deserve elections that are orderly, accessible, and trustworthy. … We view this latest action as a move by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to undermine the legal process.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) also derided the move to subpoena the election audit materials.

“The 2020 General Election in Arizona has been exhaustively reviewed,” Mayes said in a statement. “Multiple audits, court proceedings, and independent investigations — including those pursued by members of the same political party of the President — found no evidence of fraud sufficient to alter the outcome.”

“What the Trump administration appears to be pursuing now is not a legitimate law enforcement inquiry,” Mayes added, calling it a “weaponization of federal law enforcement” in service of “lies.”

In addition to county offices and audits of election outcomes being targeted by the administration, Smartmatic, a voting machine company that has frequently (and wrongly) been accused by Trump and his loyalists of having interfered in the 2020 race, is facing a criminal case from the DOJ, which alleges the company engaged in money laundering and bribery.

In a legal filing the company made on Tuesday, Smartmatic accuses the administration of engaging in a “campaign of retribution” against Trump’s “perceived enemies — chief among them those who undermine his mantra that the 2020 election was rigged.”

The company seeks to have the charges, filed in October, dismissed, or, failing that, to have the ability to pursue internal communications within the DOJ to see if there was a more vindictive motive in the department choosing to target them.