Maricopa County pushes back on Trump’s viral claim of FBI election records subpoena

Despite claims from an online news outlet with a history of posting false information that have been amplified by President Donald Trump, Maricopa County has not received a subpoena from the FBI for election information.

On Monday morning, Trump shared an article that claimed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had issued a grand jury subpoena and was getting “gigabytes of electronic data” from the county related to the 2020 election that Trump had lost in the state. 

County officials say that has not happened.

“Maricopa County runs elections in accordance with the law. We have not received a subpoena at this time but will cooperate if that were to occur,” Jason Berry, spokesperson for Maricopa County told the Arizona Mirror. Likewise, a spokesperson for the county’s Elections Department said it had not received a subpoena and no records had been seized by the FBI.

The FBI did not respond to a request for comment and the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office did not respond by the time of publication. 

The story shared by Trump was written by John Solomon, a controversial conservative journalist who launched Just the News in 2020. 

Solomon is perhaps most famous for writing a series of since-debunked columns for The Hill alleging that Joe Biden conspired with Ukrainian officials to protect his son. A veteran investigative reporter, his credibility has been questioned for years. Solomon “has a history of bending the truth to his storyline,” Columbia Journalism Review wrote of him back in 2012. 

Just The News has peddled in “fake news,” publishing false reports like a claim that Yale doctors were running a “misinformation campaign” against hydroxychloroquine and that batches of absentee ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, were missing. He also ran a litany of stories supporting the Arizona Senate Republican’s partisan “audit” of the 2020 presidential election. 

Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen, who was part of that effort, shared a screenshot of Trump’s post about the story saying that the Senate complied with an FBI grand jury subpoena for records relating to that effort, not the county. 

“Late last week I received and complied with a federal grand jury subpoena for records relating to the Arizona State Senate’s 2020 audit of Maricopa County. The FBI has the records. Any other report is fake news,” Petersen said. 

What exactly that information is, is unclear. 

The “audit” conducted by Trump allies found no evidence of widespread voter fraud and, in fact, concluded that Joe Biden defeated Trump by more votes than the official tally found.

The news all comes in the wake of the FBI’s raid of election offices in Georgia, where federal officials seized records related to Trump’s loss there and where debunked election fraud narratives have continued to fester. 

Trump and his allies have long made Arizona a key priority, especially after his 2020 loss and the President has called to “nationalize” elections while rumors have circulated of possible executive action fueled by election conspiracy theories. 

The Grand Canyon State has been at the forefront of those conspiracy theories and efforts since 2020, despite no evidence to substantiate those claims ever coming forward. 

Attorney General Kris Mayes said in a statement that the 2020 election has been “exhaustively reviewed” in Arizona and that every audit, investigation and court case has found there was “no evidence of fraud sufficient to alter the outcome.”

“These findings are not in dispute by any credible authority. The election results were certified, litigated, and affirmed,” Mayes said.

The AG noted that her office, under the direction of her predecessor, Republican Mark Brnovich, “spent over 10,000 hours” looking into claims of election fraud and found no evidence.

“Warren Petersen knows all of this. He has known it for years. He spread false stories of election fraud in 2020, and he remains an unrepentant election denier, using his platform as Senate President to legitimize conspiracy theories that Arizona’s own courts and law enforcement have thoroughly debunked,” Mayes added.

Petersen is running for attorney general this year; if he wins the Republican nomination in July, he will square off against Mayes in November.

And Gov. Katie Hobbs, who was secretary of state in 2020, sharply criticized the FBI for launching investigations based on debunked conspiracy theories.

“The FBI’s reckless actions are an attack on Arizonans and undermine our rights as voters,” she wrote on X, adding that “Arizonans are tired of election conspiracies and lies that undermine our democracy.”

***UPDATED: This story has been updated with additional comments.