FBI subpoenas Republican Arizona Senate president's records
PHOENIX (AP) — FBI agents looking into events surrounding former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss have subpoenaed Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, who orchestrated a discredited review of the election.
A second Republican senator who has aggressively promoted the lie that Trump lost because of fraud, Kelly Townsend, also received a subpoena last week, Senate spokeswoman Kin Quintero confirmed.
The FBI actions are part of a flurry of recent activity by the Department of Justice as it seeks information from people involved in efforts to discredit the 2020 election results. It is separate from the congressional inquiry into the Capitol insurrection.
Fann said on Friday that virtually all her email and text message communications are already public. That's because of records requests and lawsuits by news media groups and American Oversight, a watchdog group that has sought records related to the Senate's “audit” of election results in the state's most populous county.
“I’m pretty sure every single thing that they’re requesting is stuff that’s already out there,” Fann said in a Friday interview. “I told him, 'You know what, I have been FOIA-ed almost every week for 18 months. And so I don’t think there’s anything left there that everybody hasn’t seen yet.”
FOIA is an acronym for freedom of information request.
Fann said an FBI agent called her last week seeking to interview her about her contacts with more than a dozen people, but she told him he would need to put the request in writing.
The subpoena was served on June 22 and accepted by a Senate lawyer, Fann said. That was the day after Republican House Speaker Rusty Bowers testified before the congressional committee investigating the attack on the Capitol about Trump's efforts to...