Trump and MAGA use FBI’s voting probes in push for SAVE America Act

A Trump administration official and prominent right-wing figures are using the FBI’s expanding investigation into the 2020 election to build momentum for the SAVE America Act — and put pressure on the U.S. Senate to pass the massive voter suppression bill. 

Earlier this week, it was revealed that the bureau recently subpoenaed Arizona’s Senate for records from the legislative audit of Maricopa County’s 2020 election results. Separately, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) investigative arm opened a probe into the state’s elections. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters Tuesday that he intended to bring the SAVE America Act to a vote sometime next week. But he admitted the bill would essentially be dead on arrival without enough support to surpass the 60 votes needed to overcome the filibuster. 

But MAGA, desperate to pass the SAVE ACT, is trying to drum up support in any way it can. 

In an interview with Newsmax, Kari Lake, who has de facto led the United States Agency for Global Media, said that what’s uncovered in the Maricopa County probe “will make passing the SAVE America Act even more urgent.”

“A day of reckoning is coming in Maricopa County, Arizona, true ground zero for the nation’s most corrupt elections,” Lake said. “The American people deserve fair, honest elections where they choose their representatives, not have them chosen for them. Too often, they’ve had their sacred vote stolen.”

Lake isn’t alone. 

Conservative commentator Glenn Beck said Tuesday that, “failing to pass the SAVE Act would be the death of the Republic,” insinuating that there was mass voter fraud in recent elections.

“You have imported, let’s say 15, probably closer to 20 million people,” Beck added. “They have all been radicalized… you have no control over the vote in so many states. I’m not asking for [voting] to lean one way or another, I just want them to be accurate… The ballots that were issued were the ballots that went to the people who have a right to vote and they were counted properly and that’s the result. If you don’t have that… you’ll constantly go back-and-forth on [if] it was a stolen election.”

The FBI’s Arizona probe was revealed this week by Warren Petersen, the Republican president of the Arizona Senate. Petersen said he recently received and complied with a federal grand jury subpoena seeking documents used during the state Senate’s chaotic and partisan audit into Maricopa County’s 2020 federal election results.

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) said this week that the FBI may have received up to 13 terabytes of data from Petersen, including cast vote records and images of ballots. 

John Solomon, a conservative columnist known for promoting conspiracy theories, falsely claimed Sunday that the FBI “secretly obtain[ed] a large tranche of voting records” directly from Maricopa County via a recent grand jury subpoena.

In an interview Tuesday with the far-right influencer Benny Johnson, Solomon said he thinks the Trump administration’s Maricopa County probe will have a “profound effect” on the debate over the SAVE America Act in the Senate. 

“There is an extraordinary review going on by the CIA director, the FBI director, the director of National Intelligence,” Solomon said. “They have found a body of documents that I think will trouble all of us. It probably will have a profound effect on the Senate debate over the Save America Act.”

“When they find out maybe voter identities in their state databases were penetrated by China and used in influence operations that may change their mind,” Solomon added. “I think the debate in the Senate could be informed by what comes out in the next few weeks.”

Fontes and Arizona’s Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) warned state officials in a letter this week that the FBI’s probe may be part of the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) attempt to obtain the state’s full unredacted voter rolls.

In addition to the FBI’s probe into Arizona’s elections, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), ICE’s investigative branch is conducting a separate elections-related probe into the state, Mayes told Democracy Docket this week.

HSI initiated its investigation just days after outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem spread misinformation about Arizona’s elections during an extraordinary press conference in the state last month, according to The Atlantic, which first reported the probe.

Noem’s conference, which was held at an HSI field office in Scottsdale, ultimately amounted to a rally for the SAVE America Act.

“The SAVE America Act is absolutely critical to our country’s future because without secure elections, we lose what makes our country so great and then when we lose that, we lose our country altogether,” Noem asserted.

The exact details of HSI’s investigation are unclear, but an Arizona-based HSI agent told Mayes’ office that the agency was pursuing the elections probe on “direction from D.C.,” according to The Atlantic.