From PBS NewsHour.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday repeated the false claim that the Arizona’s 2020 election was "rigged," following the FBI’s seizure of election records in the state.
Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen said Monday that he complied with a federal grand jury subpoena for records related to state senators’ 2020 audit of Maricopa County, which includes the state’s most populous city and capital, Phoenix.
"The FBI has the records," Petersen said on social media.
Asked by PBS News’ Liz Landers why the bureau obtained those records, Trump said: "They probably thought the election was rigged, right?"
"If you say it wasn’t rigged, you’re a rotten reporter," he later added.
Multiple investigations into the 2020 election have found no proof to support Trump’s claims of a stolen election.
In December 2020, then-Attorney General William Barr also said there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the presidential election. "To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election,” he told the AP.
Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, won Arizona’s 11 electoral votes on his way to winning the presidency over Trump in 2020.
The events in Arizona mark the second time the FBI has obtained records from a 2020 battleground state. In January, the FBI seized ballots and other records in Fulton County, Georgia.
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