Arizona prosecutors are investigating Donald Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss that may have continued into last year.
Investigators are looking into a 2022 pressure campaign by Trump allies aimed at decertifying the state's electors and are examining how deeply the ex-president and his senior advisers were involved in a 2021 election audit, according to two sources familiar with the matter who spoke to Rolling Stone.
State attorney general Kris Mayes' office opened an investigation in May into an effort by Arizona Republicans to send a slate of phony electors to cast electoral ballots for Trump, similar to schemes in several other swing states won by Joe Biden, but investigators have recently taken an interest in activity that took place well after Inauguration Day 2021.
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Officials have interviewed individuals with close knowledge of internal discussions among Trump allies, sources told the magazine, and have reviewed documents that circulated among his inner circle and local allies related to those schemes.
Trump's senior adviser Boris Epshteyn called state House speaker Rusty Bowers in February 2022 asking him to support legislation drawn up by far-right former state Rep. Mark Finchem to decertify Arizona's 2020 electors, according to a report earlier this year by the Arizona Republic, that even Finchem agreed was likely unlawful.
“[T]here is no process under current law for the Arizona Legislature to ‘decertify’ an election,” he wrote in a press release introducing the measure.
Two sources say that investigators are also probing the involvement of Trump and his top aides in an audit by the private firm Cyber Ninjas, which got a million-dollar donation from Trump's Save America PAC to explore conspiracy theories involving ballots in Maricopa County.
