The Arizona Senate turned over a massive amount of data from its so-called audit of the 2020 presidential election to the FBI as part of an ongoing federal investigation.
That “audit” sprang from baseless claims by President Donald Trump and his allies that widespread election fraud contributed to his loss to former President Joe Biden in 2020.
Senate President Warren Petersen (R-Gilbert) revealed earlier this month that he complied with a grand jury subpoena for documents related to the audit, but declined at the time to reveal what documents he gave to investigators.
According to a copy of the subpoena and related documents released to KJZZ under Arizona’s public records law, the Department of Justice asked the Senate to hand over a broad array of documents and virtual records from the Senate’s controversial review of Maricopa County’s 2020 election results, which still found Biden defeated Trump.
Read the subpoena
That includes any reports or findings produced by Cyber Ninjas or its subcontractors.
The DOJ also sought electronic records provided by Maricopa County to the Senate; electronic images of the county’s election records and systems; and any forensic tools or software used to analyze those systems.
Investigators also asked for all communications between the Arizona Senate and Maricopa County election officials related to the review.
According to an FBI property receipt, Petersen turned over dozens of servers, USB drives and other electronic data storage devices containing more than 200 terabytes of data. For comparison, most commercially available smartphones max out at between 1 TB and 2 TB of storage.
That could include images of ballots turned over to the Senate as part of its 2020 “audit.” A Maricopa County spokesman said the physical ballots have been destroyed in accordance with state law, which requires ballots to be disposed of after two years.
Critics argued the new criminal investigation is a part of the president’s latest attempt to question the 2020 election results and undermine confidence in the country’s elections. The FBI also recently seized election records from Fulton County, Georgia — another swing state county Trump lost in 2020.
Election experts criticized the “audit” as inaccurate and questioned the methodology used by Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based contractor with ties to Trump hired by the Senate to conduct the review. The firm had no prior election auditing experience.
The review was initially ordered by former Arizona Senate President Karen Fann following a documented pressure campaign by Trump allies. Petersen, then chair of the Senate’s judiciary committee, also oversaw the “audit.”
The grand jury subpoena ordered Petersen to appear before the grand jury to “testify.” However, a letter from Timothy Courchaine, the U.S. Attorney for Arizona, said Petersen could turn over the documents instead of making that appearance.
Kim Quintero, the spokesperson for Senate Republicans, confirmed Petersen did not testify before the grand jury.
The FBI declined to comment.
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