(TNND) — The FBI has reportedly seized election records from a second county, this time in Arizona.
Just the News cited anonymous sources familiar with the probe in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix.
Arizona was among a handful of key swing states won by Joe Biden that gave him the presidency in 2020.
Georgia was another incredibly close state in 2020, and that’s where the FBI seized ballots from election offices in Fulton County in January of this year.
Just the News reported that the FBI has now expanded its criminal investigation into suspected election irregularities, obtaining a grand jury subpoena and taking possession of electronic election data in Maricopa County.
“Great!!!” President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social about the new probe in Arizona.
Trump and his allies have claimed the 2020 election was rigged, though dozens of lawsuits challenging the outcome were dismissed.
The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors said its election equipment and software passed all tests during an independent forensic audit following the 2020 elections.
“They’re trying to validate Trump’s claim that the election was stolen in 2020, and they’re trying to put together concerns that people might have so that they can move forward with the SAVE Act,” said Todd Belt, the Political Management program director at George Washington University.
The SAVE America Act is a Trump-backed voter identification bill that has passed the House but faces stark Democratic opposition in the Senate, where 60 votes would be needed.
The bill would also require voters to provide in-person proof of citizenship to register.
While voter ID enjoys strong public support, Belt said Democrats are concerned the requirements of the SAVE America Act would disenfranchise voters and lead to federal overreach of state powers.
But passage of the bill is a priority for Trump, who has posted about it regularly over recent weeks.
Trump said this weekend that the SAVE America Act was “all people care about,” and he vowed not to sign any other legislation until the bill was passed.
Belt said he sees a connection between the recent FBI raids in Georgia and now Arizona and the push for the SAVE America Act, saying the administration wants to “cloudy the waters” about election integrity.
But Belt said there’s no reason to keep investigating the 2020 election.
“Absolutely not. No,” he said. “Every single case that dealt with any sort of irregularities was rejected.”
The Associated Press reported that previous investigations found disorganization in the conduct of the 2020 election but no evidence of fraud.
Belt said sloppiness and fraud are getting conflated.
Just the News cited an Arizona Senate audit after the 2020 election that found more than 200,000 ballots with mismatched signatures may have been counted without being reviewed.
Arizona State Senate President Warren Petersen, a Republican, said via social media Monday that he received a federal grand jury subpoena for records relating to the Arizona State Senate’s 2020 audit of Maricopa County.
Petersen said the FBI now has those records.
The unsealed affidavit for the FBI’s investigation in Georgia said there was probable cause to believe that violations occurred related to the retention of election records and possible deprivation of a fair election.
The affidavit in the Georgia probe stated that some allegations have been disproven while others have been substantiated.
And the affidavit stated that the FBI criminal investigation originated from a referral sent by Kurt Olsen, the Trump-appointed director of election security and integrity.
Last week, Democratic Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse and Richard Blumenthal called for a Department of Justice’s Inspector General investigation into the FBI’s seizure of 2020 election records in Georgia, calling Olsen “a court-sanctioned election denier who worked to overturn the 2020 election results on President Trump’s behalf.”
Just the News reported that the FBI investigation in Arizona received data under subpoena for multiple elections, including 2020 and 2024.
And sources told Just the News that the FBI is likely to expand its election investigation beyond Georgia and Arizona in the coming weeks.
Belt said the FBI investigation into election integrity might throttle turnout in this year’s midterms if it causes voters to lose confidence in mail-in ballots.
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