Sign up for Executive Dysfunction, a weekly newsletter that surfaces under-the-radar stories about what Trump is doing to the law—and how the law is pushing back.

It may be 2026, but Donald Trump is still refusing to let go of his 2020 loss to Joe Biden. So much so that the president has been pulling and twisting the levers of the U.S. government, seeking to ensure he never loses again. It’s been a slow creep, as the Justice Department and FBI work to obtain as many states’ sensitive voter details as the agencies can get their hands on, hoping to build a fraudulent case that America’s elections are not safe. It started with Georgia in January, when FBI agents seized more than 700 boxes of physical voter records in a raid that Trump personally called in. This week, it was Arizona’s turn, with the state Senate president confirming that it had received and complied with a grand-jury subpoena for a trove of information from the state’s deeply flawed audit of its 2020 election results.

On Monday, Arizona Republican Senate President Warren Petersen—an election denier who has called for decertifying the 2020 election results—took to X to announce that he had received a grand-jury subpoena for all of its records related to the Senate’s 2020 audit of Maricopa County and happily complied. “The FBI has the records,” Petersen confirmed, including a screenshot of Trump’s Truth Social post, which also highlighted the FBI’s seizure of Arizona’s records. “Great!!!” the president said.

Isn’t this just another desperate hobbyhorse of Trump’s vendetta against the American voting populace that ushered him out of office in 2020? Is there any actual reason to be concerned about all this?

Yes there is, and here’s why: Remember the name Cyber Ninjas? It’s a cybersecurity company based in Florida that was hired by the Arizona Legislature back in 2021 to conduct an audit of the state’s 2020 election, despite not having any prior experience with election security. The CEO of Cyber Ninjas was linked to all sorts of problematic election misinformation, and his company’s audit was riddled with red flags. Auditors were caught using blue pens, which could have been used to alter ballots, and copies of ballot data were suddenly transported 1,300 miles away to a “lab” in Montana. Despite all this, in the end, Cyber Ninjas reaffirmed Biden’s critical win in the state and actually identified an additional 360 votes for him.

The company still attempted to spin these results, however, releasing a highly misleading report claiming that the vote itself had been flawed. The Maricopa County Elections Department then released its own report eviscerating Cyber Ninjas’ work, concluding that nearly every finding “included faulty analysis, inaccurate claims, misleading conclusions, and a lack of understanding of federal and state election laws.” The department also reiterated the accuracy and reliability of Arizona’s 2020 election results, noting that it had gone through accuracy tests, court cases, hand counts, and its own (more accurate) postelection audits.

What could the Trump administration possibly want with this data? Well, considering that the president has repeatedly been insisting that Republicans “nationalize the voting,” he likely has some plans in mind. Last year, Trump signed an executive order seeking to mandate that voters show proof of U.S. citizenship at the polls—the measure has been blocked by a judge—and he has since been pressuring congressional Republicans to pass the anti-voter voting legislation SAVE Act. Anything Trump can further distort from Cyber Ninjas’ already distorted work will certainly be used to those ends.

One of Trump’s Worst U.S. Attorneys Just Stepped on the Dumbest Possible Rake

If the administration can make the case that states have flawed voting systems, pointing to “evidence,” regardless of its accuracy or bias, of “voter fraud,” then it builds momentum for the federal government to assume some level of control over how states conduct their elections. The DOJ is currently suing 29 other states and D.C. for failing to share their full voter rolls. The agency is claiming that it will “test, analyze, and assess” the information and consequently notify states of any “anomalies, or concerns.” Translation: Let us purge your voter rolls for you. Adding insult to injury, the Electronic Privacy Information Center just this week issued an analysis that concluded that the DOJ’s security controls for handling sensitive voter data are “woefully inadequate.”

Popular in News & Politics

This Could Be the Real Decisive Factor in the War With Iran—and Hegseth Seems Oblivious to It

We Have a Winner for Most Grotesque Supreme Court Audition Yet

To be clear, all of this would be blatantly unlawful, as the Constitution clearly establishes that states retain the right to control the time, place, and manner of elections for senators and representatives. To circumvent this, the Trump administration is attempting to manipulate the Civil Rights Act, enacted to protect Black voters from disenfranchisement, to gain access to state voter data, then force the issue in Congress and the courts. District Judge David O. Carter called the White House’s bluff; while blocking the DOJ’s attempt to collect California’s voter data, he concluded that the centralization of such sensitive information “would have a chilling effect on voter registration which would inevitably lead to decreasing voter turnout as voters fear that their information is being used for some inappropriate or unlawful purpose.”

What the Constitution and federal law say, however, very rarely holds this president back. “What the Trump administration appears to be pursuing now is not a legitimate law enforcement inquiry,” Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes noted. “It is the weaponization of federal law enforcement in service of crackpots and lies.” Mayes and Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes have hinted that they intend to bring legal action against the administration for its latest actions.

State Rep. Adelita Grijalva also noted the timing of the FBI’s subpoena. “Trump is planting seeds of doubt in our elections to justify future intervention in the midterms,” she wrote on X. “He sees the writing on the wall (a blue wave), and he’s scared.”

This effort couldn’t be any more transparent. Unfortunately, the president’s allies in the Arizona Senate are more than happy to once again oblige.

Sign Up for Executive Dysfunction

Delivered every Thursday morning.

Department of Justice

© Slate