Former President Trump Accuses Maricopa County Of Deleting Voter Records; Recorder Responds

By Vaughan Jones
Published: Sunday, May 16, 2021 - 6:45pm
Updated: Monday, May 17, 2021 - 7:29am

Audio icon Download mp3 (883.7 KB)

Former President Donald Trump accused Maricopa County of deleting its own voter database to cover up election fraud during the Arizona Senate audit of the 2020 election.

Trump, in a statement sent to subscribers via email Saturday, said “unbelievable election crime" has been found during the audit.

In addition to claiming the database was deleted, Trump said that seals were broken on ballot boxes and ballots were missing.

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer immediately called the claim "unhinged" on social media, stating that he was looking at the database at that moment.

He followed with: “We can’t indulge these insane lies any longer. As a party. As a state. As a country.”

Richer, a Republican, won his seat in the 2020 election, defeating Democratic incumbent Adrian Fontes.

The Arizona Senate audit of the 2020 Election is reportedly causing a divide within the state’s Republican Party, with state Sen. Paul Boyer going as far as telling the New York Times the audit is making the party “look like idiots.”

And Chuck Coughlin, a Republican political consultant, says speaking out against the audit could harm Republicans running in down-ballot races.

“I think so, I think given the fact that the numbers that we’ve seen, of Republicans that have a strong opinion that the presidential election had fraud,” said Coughlin.

The audit is on a weeklong hiatus, and will start again on May 24. It was originally scheduled to end on May 14, but the pace at which ballots are being counted is slower than originally anticipated.

The audit site at Veterans Memorial Coliseum
Ben Giles/KJZZ
The audit site at Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix on April 22, 2021.

Politics