The Trump administration has expanded its investigation into alleged irregularities in the 2020 election, with a federal grand jury subpoena seeking records related to Arizona’s largest county.
Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert, posted online Monday that he complied late last week with a subpoena for records tied to the Arizona Senate’s 2020 audit of Maricopa County.
“The FBI has the records. Any other report is fake news,” Petersen stated.
He was responding to a post by President Donald Trump that read: “Great!!! FBI secretly seizes election records from Arizona’s largest county as voting probe expands.”
The subpoena comes five years after the GOP-led Arizona Senate conducted a lengthy investigation into the 2020 election.
Joe Biden won Maricopa County by 40,105 votes in 2020, the first time a Democrat running for president carried the county since 1948. Biden supposedly won Arizona by 10,457 votes.
Trump won Maricopa County and Arizona in the 2024 election, just as he did in 2016.
Jason Berry, a spokesperson for the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, stated that the county has not received a subpoena.
“Maricopa County runs elections in accordance with the law,” Berry said. “We have not received a subpoena at this time but will cooperate if that were to occur.”
The Maricopa County Recorder’s Office stated it had not received a subpoena and referred questions to the state Senate president.
Sources familiar with the FBI investigation reported that the bureau has received subpoenaed data covering multiple elections, including 2020 and 2024.
More recently, the bureau was alerted to a report filed by election observers, both Republican and Democrat, who said they believed they saw irregularities in November 2024 at a warehouse in Arizona where blank and completed absentee ballots were kept in the same location.
The FBI has received inquiries from election observers regarding potential irregularities in voting records.
In January, the bureau seized 2020 election records from Fulton County, Georgia; Trump lost Georgia by 11,779 votes. The FBI’s search in Fulton County prompted outrage from local Democratic Party leaders who have repeatedly denied claims of irregularities in the 2020 vote count.
The officials have taken legal action against the Department of Justice, demanding that the voting records seized in January be returned.
The Trump administration has been aggressively pursuing stronger federal oversight and verification of state voter registration lists, arguing it is necessary to maintain election integrity.
Since 2025, the Department of Justice has asked states to provide detailed voter registration data, sometimes including information usually redacted from public lists, such as partial Social Security numbers or driver’s license numbers.
Eleven states have agreed to provide full voter-roll data to the DOJ, while 24 states and the District of Columbia have refused to comply.
The Department of Justice has filed lawsuits against 29 states and D.C. seeking access to the records, arguing the data is needed to enforce federal election laws and verify voter eligibility.
Arizona is among the states that have not complied and are being sued by the DOJ.
Saying the demand is illegal, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, reportedly asked a federal judge last week to throw out efforts by the Trump administration to force him to turn over voter registration and election records.
