GOP official in Arizona refused to call Trump back as pressure mounted to claim voter fraud

A Republican official in Arizona said he refused to take calls from the White House in the weeks after the 2020 election because he thought those conversations should happen in open court.

Clint Hickman, then chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, was the target of an apparent pressure campaign led by Donald Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and Arizona's GOP chair Kelli Wood to convince local officials to announce there had been voting irregularities in their county, reported CNN.

"I got a phone call from the White House switchboard, and I have to say it: All of these people that called me, it wasn't stonewalling," Hickman told CNN.

But Hickman didn't think it would have been appropriate to take those calls, and refused the White House switchboard operator's request to call Trump back.

"We were in litigation at all these points," he said. "Whatever needed to be said, needed to be said in a courtroom in front of a judge or a jury."

Hickman said he cautioned Trump's campaign not to call him while those election-related lawsuits were pending, and instead let those calls go through to his voice mail and did not return them.