Senators Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) are demanding that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) end its probe into the 2020 Election in Arizona, saying the claims of fraud have been debunked and that the probe is pulling agents away from vital operations.
In March, Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen (R-14) confirmed that he handed over 2020 Election audit records to federal authorities as part of the probe, and recently referred Attorney General (AG) Kris Mayes and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for alleged obstruction of justice and witness tampering in a federal election integrity investigation.
Nevertheless, Sens. Kelly and Gallego wrote, "The election was the subject of multiple failed lawsuits and investigations and audits that revealed no evidence of fraud. Deploying agents who should be focused on targeting criminals to investigate debunked claims of election fraud makes Americans less safe and raises serious questions about the legitimacy of the investigation."
They suggested that DHS's Investigations (HSI) wing has "presented no reasonable justification for initiating an investigation into the 2020 election results in Arizona, which have been reaffirmed numerous times by bipartisan and nonpartisan entities."
In addition to ending the investigation, the Arizona Senators demand all paperwork and communications related to the investigation, data on what agents assigned to the investigation were working on before, such as domestic terror cases, human and drug trafficking cases, and cybercrime, a cost analysis of the election investigation, and a detailed justification for its existence.
"It is clear that this sham investigation is just another attempt to attack, harass, intimidate, and coerce election officials in Arizona, to suppress the right to vote of Arizonans, and to call into question the integrity of Arizona's electoral system, which has consistently proven to be secure," Kelly and Gallego concluded.
