Election Records Handed Over to the FBI in Maricopa County, Arizona, Could Be Fatally Flawed, Experts Say
This looks less like justice and more like strategy.
This week, when 2020 voting information from Maricopa County, Arizona, was handed over to the FBI, it might have seemed like a replay of the agency’s late January raid in Fulton County, Georgia.
Both are large counties in swing states that voted for Joe Biden in 2020, and both have long been targets of President Donald Trump’s claims that that year’s presidential election was stolen from him.
But the evidence collected from Maricopa County is fundamentally different, in ways that election experts say threaten the accuracy and integrity of the federal government’s investigation.
In Fulton, the FBI took the actual ballots cast in the county’s 2020 election, which had been kept in secure court storage facilities. In Maricopa, a federal grand jury subpoenaed digital data related to a partisan audit of the county’s vote, according to Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen, the subpoena’s recipient.
This material — which may have included scans and photos of ballots — was stored by the Senate, not the county. Maricopa County destroyed the original ballots after two years, as state law requires.
The firm hired by Senate Republican leaders to run the audit, the Cyber Ninjas, was funded by and took direction from Trump allies. Its leader, Doug Logan, privately admitted in text messages obtained by journalists via public records requests that its ballot recounts were “screwy.” County leaders, both Republicans and Democrats, and nonpartisan outside observers documented several ways Logan’s team had failed to follow procedures to prevent tampering. (Logan didn’t respond to a request for comment.)
Several election experts, including some who watched the Arizona audit in person in 2021, said any investigation based on the Cyber Ninja data would be fatally flawed.
“Accessing invalid data will only draw inaccurate conclusions and risk further degradation of public confidence,” said Ryan Macias, a national elections technology consultant who observed the audit on behalf of the Arizona secretary of state’s office.
The Department of Justice and White House did not answer questions from ProPublica on experts’ concerns about the quality of the data and records produced under the subpoena. A spokesperson for the Arizona U.S. attorney’s office declined to respond to questions about whether it was involved in the case, saying it was against policy to comment on grand jury subpoenas or proceedings.
Petersen, a Republican who helped launch the audit in 2021 and handed over the records to the FBI, didn’t say under which court’s authority the grand jury subpoena was issued or respond to a question on its basis. Neither Petersen nor a spokesperson for the Arizona Senate gave details on what exactly the FBI collected. The Senate has not released the subpoena.
The subpoena is the latest salvo in the Trump administration’s unprecedented attempt to reinvestigate purported problems in the 2020 election.
The White House has tasked Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who tried to assist Trump in overturning his loss, with helping to lead the criminal inquiry. Olsen helped initiate the Fulton County case, which is being overseen by Thomas Albus, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern …
This looks less like justice and more like strategy.
This week, when 2020 voting information from Maricopa County, Arizona, was handed over to the FBI, it might have seemed like a replay of the agency’s late January raid in Fulton County, Georgia.
Both are large counties in swing states that voted for Joe Biden in 2020, and both have long been targets of President Donald Trump’s claims that that year’s presidential election was stolen from him.
But the evidence collected from Maricopa County is fundamentally different, in ways that election experts say threaten the accuracy and integrity of the federal government’s investigation.
In Fulton, the FBI took the actual ballots cast in the county’s 2020 election, which had been kept in secure court storage facilities. In Maricopa, a federal grand jury subpoenaed digital data related to a partisan audit of the county’s vote, according to Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen, the subpoena’s recipient.
This material — which may have included scans and photos of ballots — was stored by the Senate, not the county. Maricopa County destroyed the original ballots after two years, as state law requires.
The firm hired by Senate Republican leaders to run the audit, the Cyber Ninjas, was funded by and took direction from Trump allies. Its leader, Doug Logan, privately admitted in text messages obtained by journalists via public records requests that its ballot recounts were “screwy.” County leaders, both Republicans and Democrats, and nonpartisan outside observers documented several ways Logan’s team had failed to follow procedures to prevent tampering. (Logan didn’t respond to a request for comment.)
Several election experts, including some who watched the Arizona audit in person in 2021, said any investigation based on the Cyber Ninja data would be fatally flawed.
“Accessing invalid data will only draw inaccurate conclusions and risk further degradation of public confidence,” said Ryan Macias, a national elections technology consultant who observed the audit on behalf of the Arizona secretary of state’s office.
The Department of Justice and White House did not answer questions from ProPublica on experts’ concerns about the quality of the data and records produced under the subpoena. A spokesperson for the Arizona U.S. attorney’s office declined to respond to questions about whether it was involved in the case, saying it was against policy to comment on grand jury subpoenas or proceedings.
Petersen, a Republican who helped launch the audit in 2021 and handed over the records to the FBI, didn’t say under which court’s authority the grand jury subpoena was issued or respond to a question on its basis. Neither Petersen nor a spokesperson for the Arizona Senate gave details on what exactly the FBI collected. The Senate has not released the subpoena.
The subpoena is the latest salvo in the Trump administration’s unprecedented attempt to reinvestigate purported problems in the 2020 election.
The White House has tasked Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who tried to assist Trump in overturning his loss, with helping to lead the criminal inquiry. Olsen helped initiate the Fulton County case, which is being overseen by Thomas Albus, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern …
Election Records Handed Over to the FBI in Maricopa County, Arizona, Could Be Fatally Flawed, Experts Say
This looks less like justice and more like strategy.
This week, when 2020 voting information from Maricopa County, Arizona, was handed over to the FBI, it might have seemed like a replay of the agency’s late January raid in Fulton County, Georgia.
Both are large counties in swing states that voted for Joe Biden in 2020, and both have long been targets of President Donald Trump’s claims that that year’s presidential election was stolen from him.
But the evidence collected from Maricopa County is fundamentally different, in ways that election experts say threaten the accuracy and integrity of the federal government’s investigation.
In Fulton, the FBI took the actual ballots cast in the county’s 2020 election, which had been kept in secure court storage facilities. In Maricopa, a federal grand jury subpoenaed digital data related to a partisan audit of the county’s vote, according to Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen, the subpoena’s recipient.
This material — which may have included scans and photos of ballots — was stored by the Senate, not the county. Maricopa County destroyed the original ballots after two years, as state law requires.
The firm hired by Senate Republican leaders to run the audit, the Cyber Ninjas, was funded by and took direction from Trump allies. Its leader, Doug Logan, privately admitted in text messages obtained by journalists via public records requests that its ballot recounts were “screwy.” County leaders, both Republicans and Democrats, and nonpartisan outside observers documented several ways Logan’s team had failed to follow procedures to prevent tampering. (Logan didn’t respond to a request for comment.)
Several election experts, including some who watched the Arizona audit in person in 2021, said any investigation based on the Cyber Ninja data would be fatally flawed.
“Accessing invalid data will only draw inaccurate conclusions and risk further degradation of public confidence,” said Ryan Macias, a national elections technology consultant who observed the audit on behalf of the Arizona secretary of state’s office.
The Department of Justice and White House did not answer questions from ProPublica on experts’ concerns about the quality of the data and records produced under the subpoena. A spokesperson for the Arizona U.S. attorney’s office declined to respond to questions about whether it was involved in the case, saying it was against policy to comment on grand jury subpoenas or proceedings.
Petersen, a Republican who helped launch the audit in 2021 and handed over the records to the FBI, didn’t say under which court’s authority the grand jury subpoena was issued or respond to a question on its basis. Neither Petersen nor a spokesperson for the Arizona Senate gave details on what exactly the FBI collected. The Senate has not released the subpoena.
The subpoena is the latest salvo in the Trump administration’s unprecedented attempt to reinvestigate purported problems in the 2020 election.
The White House has tasked Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who tried to assist Trump in overturning his loss, with helping to lead the criminal inquiry. Olsen helped initiate the Fulton County case, which is being overseen by Thomas Albus, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern …
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