Transcription
Hi everyone, Harry here. Uh, on the road in a somewhat pink room in New Orleans to talk about the FBI's successful subpoena of the same source of records from Maricopa County, Arizona, as they were able to procure by search warrant in Fulton County.
Now, these are not two counties chosen by happenstance. Maricopa is the seat of Phoenix, and Fulton, of course, as you know, is the seat of Atlanta. So here, as I've outlined, was a very concrete fear of Trump's efforts to get his mitts on election data. They simply delivered a subpoena to the Republican head, the president of the Senate, who simply turned it over. We don't know whether there were good legal claims not to provide it, but it doesn't matter. He just lay down and gave them the keys to the kingdom. So, it's the same kind of stuff that they can use to make trouble in Fulton County.
Maricopa County actually is the county that whenever I've been sort of illustrating the mischief they could do, I choose Maricopa because it's been the seat of controversy in the past. Arizona is a quintessential swing state, and Phoenix, of course, is where a lot of Democratic voters are located. Now, just as in Fulton County, Maricopa County has been the source of a lot of controversy that has been put to bed repeatedly. And the attorney general said this is just a complete hoodwinking, complete bogus subpoena. But now the Arizona state senate president has turned over what they are looking for.
Now, there's a big history, as I've said, in Maricopa County. They went through months and months of an audit because it continued to be the object of agitation by election deniers, and they went through it very carefully. Some of the records are no longer available, even, uh, but they went through it very carefully, showed it was completely on the up and up. Nevertheless, the subpoena, which we have yet to see, uh, almost certainly echoes what they've done in Fulton County and alleges some kinds of crimes that somehow would still be subject to the statute of limitations for conduct that was done in 2020.
Now, Trump himself was kept in the loop here. He hailed the move to send out the subpoena this morning. Uh, and he linked to a demand for records by a very right-wing reporter. Great triple exclamation point. "FBI secretly seizes election records from Arizona's largest county as voting probe expands." So what this means in practical terms, if Arizona is a close, uh, state, a, uh, kind of borderline state, as it was in '24, as it was in '20, they can have the data to make all kinds of trouble.
Now, just like the subpoena in Fulton County, the origin here, so the FBI doesn't does, uh, in its subpoena, relies on a well-known election denier, the very same one who was at the, um, core of the, uh, search warrant, search warrant application in Fulton County. It was Kurt Olsen, the White House's director of election security and integrity and very, until recently, just a prominent election denier. They also have the local US attorney there, uh, as they've done in other states, to say, "Well, this is something we really have to look, uh, into." The US attorney is a longtime member of the Federalist Society, and the state in general in Arizona is seated with a number of Trump, uh, acolytes.
So really, there is the summary here is there's no legal basis for them to get these records. Uh, no, uh, legal or factual basis to believe that the election in 2020 was anything on but on the up and up. The efforts by, uh, diehard election deniers to try somehow to call into question the results in Maricopa County have been repeatedly rebuffed. Nevertheless, you have the FBI clearly directed by political operators in the Department of Justice serving a subpoena, and the very willing, uh, Republican president of the Arizona Senate saying, "Oh, sure. No problem. I complied with that federal grand jury subpoena." That, by the way, suggests there's some federal grand jury that has been impaneled. Who knows what the US attorney there may be trying to investigate?
Recall the charges that were attached to the search warrant in Fulton County seemed extremely far-fetched. Recall also that they don't seem to have done anything, uh, to pursue any kind of criminal inquiry once they got their hands on the 700 boxes of materials from Fulton County. By the way, those 700 boxes continue to be, uh, litigated over in Fulton County, with Fulton County itself saying, "We want them back." But even if they get those materials back, the feds still get to keep their copy.
So, the barn door is open in Fulton County. And now, by dint of just a, um, complete acquiescence from the Republican Senate president and Trump, uh, loyalist in the Arizona Senate, so are the records to Maricopa County. And even though we have again and again shown the people in Maricopa County have that there is nothing here, no basis potentially to question anything about the 2020 election. You now have the administration in possession, uh, of a, uh, the, the sorts of data they can use to try to make trouble in a fast-moving election.
And if Maricopa County turns out to be quite close, which it stands to reason, and of course it is, as I've said, a Democratic stronghold, and this is notwithstanding, we're not talking an informal kind of look, but because there was such vehemence by election deniers, you had an audit sponsored by the state senate, the very entity whose president has just said, "Sure, here's all the records," uh, carried out by a reputable company over six months of the 2 million votes cast in Maricopa County, and you know it found that there was no problem at all. Indeed, uh, the reported made, uh, showed that actually Biden's votes had been undercounted and Trump's votes, uh, had been overcounted. So it wound up tallying when the perfect numbers were, um, secured, 99 more votes for Biden, 261 fewer votes for Trump. Those are very, very small numbers. It doesn't matter. But what matters is we've been through this. We know everything is kosher, fine. And yet now that the FBI has these records, the same kinds of things as in Fulton County, the potential for them to make trouble and the administration to make trouble after an election if Maricopa County is close is really pronounced.
And this is front and center, the kind of Trump plan that he wasn't able to execute in 2020, and that now he looks all in on trying to be able to do to cast doubt where no real doubt should exist, create chaos, and as he said back in 2020, with chaos, maybe just let the Republican members of Congress in the House do his dirty business. This is dangerous stuff, and there are now two really important counties where the feds have the data to really make trouble.
Talk to you later. Thanks for watching Talking Feds. If you enjoyed this video, please remember to like and subscribe. And for a lot more content, all of my essays, ad-free podcasts, and weekly ask me anything Q&A sessions, check out the Talking Feds Substack, and please subscribe there as well. Talk to you later.