WASHINGTON — New records obtained by The Arizona Republic show President Trump and allies leaving text messages and voicemails for Maricopa County election officials in the days following the November election, pressuring them to support unfounded claims of fraud. Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward, a notorious right-wing firebrand, even urged county officials “to stop the counting.” An independent review of the results found no evidence of systemic irregularities.
“These records show once again how far Republicans are willing to go to defend Trump’s Big Lie,” said Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee Jessica Post. “Arizona Republicans have demonstrated time and again that they put their loyalty to Donald Trump above the health of our democracy. With their ongoing ‘fraudit’, the GOP is continuing to undermine the faith in our elections while spreading totally unfounded conspiracy theories.”
These efforts to spread misinformation about the election results persist to today with the Arizona Senate GOP’s deeply biased “fraudit,” which has been denounced by independent election experts. With Trump bizarrely claiming that the “audit” will lead to his reinstatement, these new records only emphasize how the “audit” is merely another stunt in a long run of attempts to subvert the will of Arizona voters.
The Arizona Republic: ‘We need you to stop the counting’: Records detail intense efforts by Trump allies to pressure Maricopa County supervisors
Then-President Donald Trump tried to speak directly with the chair of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in the weeks after the November 2020 election as his allies sought to change the election results in a state he narrowly lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
New records obtained by The Arizona Republic reveal the behind-the scenes efforts by Trump, his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, and state GOP Chair Kelli Ward to pressure the county supervisors, who make up the elected body that oversees elections in the state’s most populous county.
Text messages and voicemails make clear that Trump’s allies were fixated on how the supervisors were going to address what the Trump team deemed as voting irregularities. Those concerns included the software used in voting machines, and how to reconcile Trump’s underperformance around the county compared with other GOP candidates.
###
