People deposit their mail-in ballots for the US presidential election at a ballot collection box in Phoenix, Arizona on October 18, 2020.
Robyn Beck | Afp | Getty Images
A federal grand jury issued a subpoena for records of the Arizona state Senate’s audit of 2020 election results in Maricopa County, the Senate president said Monday. The county is a Democratic stronghold that President Donald Trump lost that year, contributing to his loss of the state to former President Joe Biden.
“The FBI has the records,” wrote Senate President Warren Petersen, a Republican, in a post on the social media site X, which said he received a subpoena for those records last week and that he complied with it.
The issuance of the subpoena suggests that the Department of Justice has expanded its investigation into the 2020 election results and much-debunked allegations by Trump and supporters of his that he was cheated out of victory that year by widespread ballot fraud.
The subpoena came about five weeks after the FBI raided an election facility in Fulton County, Georgia, and seized ballots from the 2020 election.
Fulton County, like Maricopa County, was the focus of claims by Trump that he was swindled out of victory in 2020.
Trump touted a report by the right-wing media site Just the News about the subpoena.
“Great!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “FBI secretly seizes election records from Arizona’s largest county as voting probe expands.”
Biden’s victory in Arizona and Georgia helped give him the edge over Trump in the Electoral College, the entity that determines the winner of presidential contests.
CNBC has request comment from the Department of Justice about the subpoena.
