Secretary Fontes on 2020 Maricopa County election audit

Maricopa County was a focus of President Donald Trump and his allies after his 2020 loss, and CNN reported at the time that White House officials attempted to call a senior county official as part of their pressure campaign.

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes joined “Arizona Horizon” to discuss the 2020 Maricopa County election audit.

In the wake of the 2020 election and President Trump’s repeated claims of fraud, Secretary Fontes, who was Maricopa County Recorder at the time and in charge of overseeing results of the election, explained that Arizona Senate Republicans conducted a lengthy review of the 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County. The Senate released its full report once it was finished.

Secretary Fontes said Republicans hired a company called Cyber Ninjas, which had no experience auditing election results, to conduct the review. The company shut down in 2022.

Secretary Fontes said Maricopa County officials issued a 93-page rebuttal to the review, which said the only error the audit correctly identified was that 50 ballots had mistakenly been double-counted, not enough to shift President Trump’s loss.

Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen tweeted that he complied with an FBI subpoena to turn over records related to the 2020 audit of the Maricopa County election results.

President Trump is 100% correct.

Late last week I received and complied with a federal grand jury subpoena for records relating to the Arizona State Senate’s 2020 audit of Maricopa County. The FBI has the records. Any other report is fake news.@realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/C2T202VgZP

— Warren Petersen (@votewarren) March 9, 2026

“I’m actually surprised he tweeted it out because it’s an active investigation,” Fontes said. “Bottomline is we were a little taken surprise because rumor mill was saying it was Maricopa County. On the one hand we’re glad they cleared it up. On the other hand, I think this could be problematic for our other case as well.”