Two of the top Democrats in Arizona are at odds with the Republican Senate president after he turned over a trove of records to the FBI related to Arizona’s 2020 election. And now, there are questions about the state’s top Department of Justice attorney and his involvement.
Last month, state Sen. Warren Petersen gave federal officials electronic records from the controversial Cyber Ninjas audit of Arizona’s 2020 election as part of their ongoing investigation into that election, which President Donald Trump lost to President Joe Biden.
Since, there’s been a dizzying back and forth between Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and Petersen, as they voice concerns about voter information — and Petersen pushes back.
Wayne Schutsky with KJZZ’s Politics Desk has been covering it all. He joined The Show to talk about it.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Wayne.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Good morning.
LAUREN GILGER: OK, so what is the federal government up to here? Like why are they investigating the 2020 election?
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: In a nutshell, they are essentially rehashing President Trump's grievances about the 2020 election, which obviously he lost and lost in Arizona to Democrat Joe Biden. So he's long claimed without evidence that widespread fraud led to that loss, and it just looks like now that he's back in power, he's using the levers of government to go back and dig back into some of those conspiracies.
LAUREN GILGER: OK, so what records did Petersen turn over to the FBI? This wasn't quite the same as all those headlines we saw about Fulton County, Georgia, right, where the FBI raided election offices. This was records from this so-called audit that has been as, I think you put it in your story, much maligned.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah, yeah, no raid necessary. They presented ... Senate President Petersen with a subpoena. And we don't know exactly all of the records specifically, but he turned over terabytes and terabytes, which is just a huge amount of data from that audit, which was where they had the little spinning lazy Susans and all sorts of stuff. And were looking at counting Maricopa County's ballots to try and verify the election.
Obviously, a lot of election experts said that that situation was was really not professional, not done the right way, and you can't really trust the results, though they did show that Joe Biden won. However, all the documents they got, you know, all sorts of election-related documents from Maricopa County, that's kind of the concern. So that was likely included in the tranche of data that he turned over.
LAUREN GILGER: I remember the scenes at the State Fairgrounds, right. OK, so what are Fontes and Mayes concerned about here?
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: So they think this is happening parallel to the DOJ's effort to get access to unredacted voter rolls in Arizona and other states, which Mayes and Fontes are fighting in court. And so they basically sent a letter out to all the county recorders across the state and said, "Hey, if the DOJ comes at you with similar subpoenas like they did with the Senate president for your voter records, do not comply whether or not they have a grand jury subpoena or not, because we think that that would violate um federal state privacy laws because of all the personal information and ... private voter information included in there."
So they're saying don't do it, subpoena or not.
LAUREN GILGER: OK, OK. So they sent this letter and Petersen shot back, referred them for obstruction of justice?
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah, he basically wrote to U.S. Attorney [Timothy] Courchaine and said, "Hey, I believe that this is obstruction of justice, witness tampering, like can you please look into this," basically.
LAUREN GILGER: And now you've got a response from the U.S. attorney for Arizona and and he was pretty forthcoming.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah ... he said he's taken a look at these allegations, but also seemed very sympathetic to Petersen's allegations in there, you know, saying that — I think "astonishing" was the word he would use — that these officials would try to interfere with the grand jury's duty.
LAUREN GILGER: Tell us what we know about this U.S. Attorney Courchaine.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: So he's not like the some of these more controversial figures we've seen especially in a lot of like East Coast states that Trump appointees, you know, personal Trump attorneys, folks that have no DOJ experience just being thrust into these roles for which they have very little experience.
He's a former assistant U.S. attorney. He clerked for ... Arizona Supreme Court Justice Bill Montgomery. He he's got a background in this. He made sense as an appointee. ... He was actually reappointed by the district court because he hasn't been Senate confirmed, so that's a process that's required.
We've seen other Trump appointees, some of these more political figures not receive that reappointment. So, I mean on the surface he seems like a pretty typical DOJ appointee for a Republican president.
LAUREN GILGER: OK. Is this out of the ordinary though, Wayne, that the U.S. attorney here is sort of saying what he thinks very clearly in this letter?
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: I mean less and less so in in this era of politics we are in, but typically when like for instance if I reach out and ask about an investigation, the response is very short and curt. You know, we either we don't comment on pending investigations or this has been referred to an investigative agency like the FBI, that's a response I've gotten.
Last time Senate President Petersen did this with Sen. Annalise Ortiz when she was notifying folks about ICE in their communities, he sent a letter to the DOJ basically asking the same thing, can you look into this, did it break the law?
And the DOJ's response to me at that time was essentially: We're not an investigative agency, but we're looking and sending this maybe to FBI or whoever. So very different than that past situation.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, very different response. What did Mayes and Fontes have to say about that?
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: They basically said it's ridiculous and that it's political posturing and that, you know, they're try they're doing what they believe their duty is complying with the law and they think this is just a a political effort both by Senate President Petersen — who happens to be running against Attorney General Mayes potentially to be the next AG — and U.S. Attorney Courchaine to just appease Trump, basically.
LAUREN GILGER: So, Wayne, what does all of this mean for the upcoming midterms elections? We've seen a lot of reporting, a lot of folks concerned about potential efforts by the Trump administration to change election norms, to you know, maybe claim election interference. There are concerns about what could happen coming up here. How does this all play into that larger narrative?
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah, we've seen the Trump administration, you know, President Trump himself trying to use executive orders to give the federal government more power over elections, and we're still trying to see how that plays out. So, you know, especially Democrats believe this is part of that effort to either give an excuse to kind of take over control of those elections or to just sow doubt.
And so if, you know, as is expected right now, Democrats do relatively well in the midterms that then they can use these type of situations to sow doubt and claim that, you know, there was some sort of funny business going on versus just the electorate, you know, doing what it usually does, which is sending the midterms to the opposite party.
LAUREN GILGER: Right. And and one more question there on what you just alluded to, which is that the midterms are coming up and we do expect, it sounds like based on polling, that Democrats could do pretty well. This could shape things.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah, I mean that's, again — and that's not abnormal, you know, especially right now President Trump, it's proven a lot of the stuff he's doing right now, the Iran war, things like that are very unpopular with voters. And so assuming that kind of stays the course, that is going to give momentum to Democrats.
Plus, you know, the the minority party typically does well, the party not in the White House in midterms almost every every cycle like this. So yeah, they have a lot of Democrats have a lot of headwinds and this could be a Republican attempt they think to just try to tamp down on those.
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