The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s investigative arm is looking into the 2020 presidential election in Arizona, state Attorney General Kris Mayes said, the latest Trump administration move that could fuel doubts about ballot security ahead of the midterms.
Homeland Security Investigations, which typically focuses on transnational crimes such as drug trafficking and human smuggling, is now examining the results of the election Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden, almost six years after the vote.
Mayes confirmed Tuesday that federal investigators requested records tied to a prior state probe into allegations of voter fraud. Her office complied by providing public documents from an earlier investigation conducted under the Republican former attorney general, Mark Brnovich, which reviewed thousands of claims related to the 2020 election.
“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 said in a statement. “We were happy to share them, because those materials speak for themselves.”
That previous inquiry, which Mayes said involved roughly 10,000 hours of investigative work, examined allegations ranging from claims of imported ballots to conspiracy theories involving foreign interference. It found no evidence of widespread fraud that could have changed the election’s outcome, Mayes said.
The Atlantic was the first to report the HSI investigation.
The state’s compliance this week notably follows a letter sent Monday by Mayes and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes warning all 14 county recorders that they would violate federal and state election law if they complied with a federal subpoena to turn over voter rolls. The Trump administration sued the state in January for failing turn over records.
The federal probe comes as other investigations tied to the 2020 election have unfolded in recent weeks. Federal authorities obtained records from the Arizona state Senate earlier this month related to the 2021 probe conducted by a former Florida-based cybersecurity company, Cyber Ninjas, of ballots in Maricopa County, the state’s largest county.
In January, FBI agents seized hundreds of boxes of election materials from the Fulton County election office in Georgia, despite multiple audits and previous court rulings affirming Biden’s 2020 victory.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security declined to comment further, citing an active investigation, but said “HSI is actively rooting out and investigating election fraud wherever it can be found.”
Trump and his allies have continued to press claims of voter fraud ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, even as those theories have been heavily debunked.
Laura Barrón-López contributed to this report.
