FBI obtains Arizona Senate's 2020 Maricopa election audit records via grand-jury subpoena

On the morning of March 9, 2026, Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen, a Republican, disclosed on social media that he had received and complied with a federal grand-jury subpoena from the FBI seeking records tied to the Arizona Senate's 2021 review of Maricopa County's 2020 presidential election. The subpoena, later obtained by Votebeat, confirmed that a federal grand jury is conducting a criminal investigation and that the FBI sought forensic images, videos, hard drives, and other documents linked to the chamber's review. The records the Senate had collected from that review included data downloaded from equipment used in the 2020 election, among them ballot images.

The 2021 review was commissioned by Senate Republican leaders and carried out by Cyber Ninjas, a firm with no prior election-audit experience that was funded by and took direction from allies of Donald Trump. That review — promoted as a vehicle to overturn the result — instead slightly increased Joe Biden's margin of victory in the county and found no evidence of substantial fraud. Maricopa County officials said they had received no subpoena and that the county no longer holds the physical 2020 ballots, which state law required be destroyed two years after the election.

The subpoena is one facet of a broader federal effort to relitigate the 2020 election that President Trump lost. Several weeks earlier the FBI searched a Fulton County, Georgia, elections office for 2020-related records, and the Justice Department's parallel demand for roughly 865,000 Wayne County, Michigan ballots from the 2024 election (recorded at entries/2026/04/14/federal-weaponizing-doj-7a3f6e32.md) expressly invoked similar 2020-era predicates. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, called the subpoena an effort to "undermine the legal process" and said his office was working to protect personal voter information contained in the 2020 data.

The Standing records this as the federal government turning criminal- investigative authority against a state legislature's own discredited audit of a settled, repeatedly-confirmed election result — a politicized investigation that weaponizes the Justice Department in service of a sustained campaign to deny the legitimacy of the 2020 outcome.