The grand jury subpoena earlier this month that led the Arizona Senate to give the U.S. Department of Justice terabytes of data, including images of ballots, related to the legislative chamber’s partisan review of the 2020 election shows that federal investigators sought virtually all of the records from that “audit.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona sent the request to Senate President Warren Petersen on March 5, just over two weeks after former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited the state, spreading election fraud claims while stumping for Republican voting legislation that would disenfranchise millions of Americans.

The subpoena states that the documents are sought as part of a “criminal investigation.” The email to Petersen came from the FBI Phoenix Field Office’s Fraud Investigations unit.

The subpoena sought:

  • Reports produced by the Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based firm hired to conduct the “audit,” summarizing the forensic findings
  • “Any original electronic media devices in the possession of the Arizona State Senate provided by Maricopa County” including “external hard drives, thumb drives, USB drives, memory cards, SD cards, PCMIA cards, compact flash, CD/DVD, with accompanying chain of custody documentation”
  • Any other electronic media provided to the Cyber Ninjas or its subcontractors or “clones of the Maricopa County Election Department’s elections equipment software and data, with accompanying chain of custody documentation”
  • Any documentation on “forensic tools used, forensic software versions used, forensic procedures used, and all documentation related to the imaging, cloning, extraction, and analysis of the Maricopa County Elections Department electronic systems”
  • Any “official records depicting communications between the Arizona Senate and public officials from Maricopa County, to include members of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, and the Maricopa County Elections Department”

The “audit,” conducted by Donald Trump allies with no background or knowledge of election administration, found no evidence of widespread voter fraud and, in fact, concluded that Joe Biden defeated Trump by more votes than the official tally found.

Included in the documents provided to the Mirror is a receipt for property that details what the Arizona Senate handed over to the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

Those items include:

  • Multiple 6-terabyte hard drives with “forensic images,” likely of ballots, all of which were photographed during the election review
  • Backup servers that include video footage from the “audit” itself
  • Eight USB drives
  • “Misc documents”

It is not certain what all is stored on the drives, though most of the drives given over to the FBI are attributed to CyFir, one of the subcontractors that the Cyber Ninjas hired.

CyFir’s CEO, Ben Cotton, had to walk back bombastic claims made during the election review, and at one point took the data from the “audit” to a “lab” in Montana.

Trump and his allies have long made Arizona a key priority, especially after his 2020 loss, and the president has called to “nationalize” elections while rumors have circulated of possible executive action fueled by election conspiracy theories.

The Grand Canyon State has been at the forefront of those conspiracy theories and efforts since 2020, despite no evidence to substantiate those claims ever coming forward.

The “audit” conducted by the Cyber Ninjas included many falsehoods, some of which have persisted till this day such as the claim of 74,000 phantom voters which has been thoroughly debunked.

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