Arizona State Senate President Warren Petersen has officially referred Attorney General Kris Mayes and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes to the U.S. Department of Justice for criminal obstruction of justice and witness tampering, directly tied to the Trump administration’s ongoing criminal investigation into the 2020 presidential election.
Petersen dropped the hammer on Tuesday, announcing on X that he had sent a formal criminal referral to the U.S. Attorney for Arizona after Mayes and Fontes, after the two sent threatening letters demanding details on what records Petersen turned over to federal investigators pursuant to a grand jury subpoena.
The controversy centers around a federal grand jury investigation tied to records from Arizona’s 2020 election and the Maricopa County audit.
The Gateway Pundit reported last month that the FBI has quietly seized Maricopa County election data and voting records via a grand jury subpoena.
The probe reportedly involves allegations from the 2024 election that Runbeck Election Services, the private company that provides ballot printing and mail-in ballot services in 31 states and 54% of the nation’s voters, allegedly commingled voted ballots with blank ballots in multiple states. US Rep. Abe Hamadeh previously alerted the Department of Justice to these findings and demanded an investigation.
This also comes after the 2020 and 2022 elections, during which hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots were counted without chain-of-custody documentation and with mismatched signatures.
Petersen alleges that Mayes and Fontes attempted to interfere with that investigation by:
- Warning county officials not to comply with federal subpoenas
- Suggesting that turning over voter data could be illegal
- Potentially discouraging cooperation with federal investigators
“Today I referred Kris Mayes and Adrian Fontes to the Department of Justice for obstruction of justice and tampering with a witness. It is disturbing to see their resistance to an election integrity investigation.”
Today I referred Kris Mayes and Adrian Fontes to the Department of Justice for obstruction of justice and tampering with a witness. It is disturbing to see their resistance to an election integrity investigation.https://t.co/pRJ3mJgsuE pic.twitter.com/MwOS1wQBwB
— Warren Petersen (@votewarren) April 7, 2026
Now, with the Trump DOJ under new leadership reopening the probe into the 2020 election crimes, including the FBI’s grand jury subpoena for terabytes of data from Arizona’s own 2021 legislative review, Mayes and Fontes are panicking.
They fired off letters to Petersen demanding to know exactly what voter data and audit records were handed over, claiming “privacy” concerns while trying to intimidate counties and officials into resisting federal investigators.
Petersen’s legal team at Snell & Wilmer reviewed the letters and concluded the actions were inappropriate and potentially criminal.
Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen laid out a stunning case to U.S. Attorney Timothy Courchaine, accusing the state’s top election officials of actively undermining a federal investigation.
Read the letter below:
The post Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen Refers Democrat AG Kris Mayes and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes to DOJ for CRIMINAL Witness Tampering and Obstruction of Justice in Explosive 2020 Election Investigation appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.