People deposit U.S. presidential election mail-in ballots at a drop box in Phoenix, Arizona, October 18, 2020.
Robin Beck | AFP | Getty Images
The Senate president announced Monday that a federal grand jury has issued a subpoena for the Arizona Senate’s audit records of the 2020 Maricopa County election results. The county was a Democratic stronghold lost to President Donald Trump that year and contributed to former President Joe Biden’s loss of the state.
“The FBI has the records,” Republican Senate President Warren Petersen said in a post on social media site X, adding that he received and complied with a subpoena for those records last week.
The issuance of the subpoenas signals that the Justice Department has expanded its investigation into the 2020 election results and the many debunked claims by Mr. Trump and his allies that his victory that year was stolen from him through widespread voter fraud.
The subpoena comes about five weeks after the FBI raided an election facility in Fulton County, Georgia, and seized ballots from the 2020 election.
Fulton County, along with Maricopa County, was the focus of President Trump’s claims that he was cheated out of his 2020 victory.
President Trump touted a report by the right-wing media site Just the News about the subpoena.
“Great!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “As voting investigation expands, the FBI secretly seizes election records from Arizona’s largest county.”
Biden’s victories in Arizona and Georgia helped give him an advantage over Trump in the Electoral College, which determines the winner of the presidential election.
CNBC has reached out to the Department of Justice for comment on the subpoena.
