Trump was 'obsessed with Arizona' and viewed it as central to stealing the 2020 election: analysis

The new reporting about former President Donald Trump's post-election phone call with then-Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey is a further encapsulation of how "obsessed" he was with overturning the result in Arizona, said CNN chief national affairs correspondent Jeff Zeleny in a panel on Monday.

"I do want to ... get your thoughts," said anchor Alex Marquardt. "We have sources telling CNN after President Trump lost the 2020 election, he then called the former governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, to pressure him to overturn results in that state. We understand that Ducey has not spoken with the special counsel, Jack Smith, but doesn't this add more fuel to that January 6 investigation?"

"It certainly adds another state," said Zeleny. "But this comes as a surprise to no one, because Donald Trump, at that time, as we all know and reported, was obsessed with Arizona, and obsessed with the Fox News call of it. But certainly, it's another example."

That being the case, Zeleny added, there is a key reason this is less likely to be the foundation of criminal charges against the former president than his infamous phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

"There's not a tape recording in Arizona, which is one of the issues there is in Georgia, of course," Zeleny continued. "And we believe it's at the heart of that case, where the president was trying to find some 11,000-odd votes. So I'm not sure this gives us any new information. It just gives us more information, into his mindset and obsession with trying to, effectively, steal the election."

Trump and his legal allies focused enormous amounts of effort into not only flipping the Arizona election result in 2020, but trying to "audit" it after the fact, culminating in a lengthy, opaque, and highly partisan investigation by a firm called Cyber Ninjas, that concluded with no evidence President Joe Biden's win was illegitimate and a series of court battles over public records that ultimately caused the company to shut down.

Watch the segment below or at this link.

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