(NEW YORK) — The Department of Homeland Security’s investigations arm is investigating 2020 election results in Arizona, the state’s attorney general, Kris Mayes, and a source familiar with the matter confirmed to ABC News on Tuesday.
It is not typical for Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) to investigate election results, though the agency has investigated voter fraud cases in the past. The agency serves as the investigative arm of DHS and usually investigates transnational crime, including drug smuggling and human trafficking.
Mayes, a Democrat, told ABC News in a statement, “The Trump administration is engaged in an unserious investigation into an election that took place six years ago based on nothing but conspiracy theories and lies. At the request of local leadership at Homeland Security Investigations, the Arizona Attorney General’s Office provided them with public records from the 2020 election investigation conducted under the prior Attorney General, Mark Brnovich. We were happy to share them, because those materials speak for themselves.”
The investigation by Brnovich, Mayes added, included “10,000 hours investigating every claim made by election deniers, from bamboo ballots imported from China to Italian spy satellites flipping votes to President Biden” and found no evidence to support any of the allegations.
“Those conclusions were true then and they remain true now. There was no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election in Arizona,” Mayes wrote.
A separate source confirmed to ABC News that it’s believed HSI communicated the investigation to the attorney general a week after outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited an HSI office in Arizona in February.
When Noem visited Arizona in February, she was asked by reporters to identify cases of voter fraud in the state.
“I’m sure there are many of them,” she responded, without providing specifics.
A DHS spokesperson told ABC News the department could not comment on “any active investigations,” but said that HSI “is actively rooting out and investigating election fraud wherever it can be found. We have repeatedly demonstrated that illegal aliens can and do vote in our elections. Under President Trump, HSI is committed to restoring integrity to our election systems and ensuring that American citizens and only American citizens are electing American leaders.”
The Atlantic first reported the HSI investigation.
It is unclear if the HSI investigation is connected to a subpoena from the Trump administration of records related to the 2020 election in Arizona’s Maricopa County, which Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen confirmed on Monday. (The Atlantic reported that the state attorney general’s office did not believe the investigations were connected.)
The records sought under the subpoena are related to the Arizona state Senate’s audit of Maricopa County’s 2020 election results, conducted by cybersecurity firm Cyber Ninjas in 2021. That audit came to the same conclusion election officials in Maricopa County did — that President Joe Biden won the county. Both the Maricopa County Elections office and the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office told ABC News on Monday that they have not received subpoenas.
The investigation in Arizona comes after the FBI seized 2020 voting records from Fulton County, Georgia, while serving a search warrant in January. Fulton County officials have sought to have the files returned, arguing to a judge the FBI probe lacked “even the faintest possibility of probable cause.”
Election results in Georgia and Arizona, more broadly, have both been at the center of election conspiracies about the 2020 election.
Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
Never miss out on local news. Sign up below for Tri-County Insider News:
