The investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security has opened a new investigation into Arizona’s 2020 election results.
The investigation is being conducted by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the law enforcement branch of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). HSI typically focuses on transnational crimes such as drug trafficking, human smuggling, and financial crimes. While the agency has investigated isolated cases of voter fraud in the past, it is uncommon for HSI to examine the results of a presidential election itself.
Mayes, a Democrat, sharply criticized the investigation and said her office has already provided federal officials with previously compiled records related to Arizona’s 2020 election reviews.
“The Trump administration is engaged in an unserious investigation into an election that took place six years ago based on nothing but conspiracy theories and lies,” Mayes told ABC News in a statement. “At the request of local leadership at Homeland Security Investigations, the Arizona Attorney General’s Office provided them with public records from the 2020 election investigation conducted under the prior Attorney General, Mark Brnovich. We were happy to share them, because those materials speak for themselves.”
Mayes noted that Brnovich, a Republican who served as attorney general during and after the 2020 election, oversaw an extensive inquiry into claims of election fraud in Arizona.
According to Mayes, that effort involved thousands of hours of investigative work and examined many of the most widely circulated allegations about the election.
“The investigation by Brnovich, Mayes added, included ‘10,000 hours investigating every claim made by election deniers, from bamboo ballots imported from China to Italian spy satellites flipping votes to President Biden’ and found no evidence to support any of the allegations,” she said.
“Those conclusions were true then and they remain true now. There was no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election in Arizona,” Mayes wrote.
The new federal investigation appears to have been communicated to the Arizona attorney general’s office shortly after then–Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited an HSI office in Arizona in February, according to a separate source familiar with the matter.
During that visit, Noem was asked by reporters whether authorities had identified instances of voter fraud in the state.
“I’m sure there are many of them,” she responded, though she did not provide specific examples.
A DHS spokesperson declined to discuss details of the inquiry, citing department policy regarding active investigations. However, the spokesperson said HSI continues to pursue cases related to election integrity.
“HSI is actively rooting out and investigating election fraud wherever it can be found,” the spokesperson said. “We have repeatedly demonstrated that illegal aliens can and do vote in our elections. Under President Trump, HSI is committed to restoring integrity to our election systems and ensuring that American citizens and only American citizens are electing American leaders.”
It remains unclear whether the HSI investigation is related to a separate federal subpoena seeking records connected to the 2020 election in Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous county.
The subpoena reportedly seeks materials tied to the controversial audit of Maricopa County’s 2020 election conducted in 2021 by the private cybersecurity firm Cyber Ninjas. That review—ordered by Republican state senators after the election—ultimately confirmed the original results showing that Joe Biden won the county. Maricopa County election officials had already reached the same conclusion.
However, both the Maricopa County Elections Department and the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office said Monday they had not received any federal subpoenas related to the matter.
Arizona was one of several closely contested states in the 2020 presidential election. Biden ultimately won the state by just over 10,000 votes, marking the first time a Democratic presidential candidate had carried Arizona since 1996. Nationally, Biden defeated Donald Trump by more than 7 million votes and secured an Electoral College victory of 306 to 232.
The Arizona probe comes amid other federal actions involving election records. Earlier this year, the FBI seized voting records from Fulton County, Georgia, as part of a separate investigation.
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