Former President Donald Trump said Republicans would benefit greatly from talking about Arizona’s 2020 election audit.
The Arizona Senate hired an audit team last month to begin reviewing nearly 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County, along with machines used to conduct the 2020 election.
“That’s all people ask me. They say, ‘What’s going on in Arizona?'” Trump told One America News in an interview that aired Thursday night, The Epoch Times reported.
“They want to talk about the election fraud. The weak Republicans don’t want to talk about it. The weak or stupid or RINOs [Republican in name only], call them whatever you want, and yet the Republican voter, that’s what they want to hear.
“They want to hear about 2020. They want to find out, is that something that should be turned over? When they rob a jewelry store of all the diamonds and they get caught, you have to return the diamonds. They want to find out what’s going on. The Republican voter wants the story. The weak Republican politician doesn’t want to talk about this story because they think it’s bad politically.”
Trump believes otherwise. “I think it’s great politically,” he said.
President Joe Biden defeated Trump by more than 45,000 votes in heavily Republican Maricopa County. That resulted in a 10,000-vote victory statewide for Biden.
Although Arizona Republicans have been vocal in supporting the audit, Reps. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz. and Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., have not been joined by many national level GOP lawmakers.
Trump said that if current Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., had been more focused more on election integrity, he would have defeated Biden.
“Other than fundraising, he’s really weak,” Trump said of McConnell.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., who last week replaced Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., as the House Republican Conference chair, spoke of the audit.
“I support that audit,” Stefanik said.
“Transparency is good for the American people. And again, this should be a nonpartisan issue, whether you are Republican, Democrat, independent, or conservative, transparency is important, and the audit was passed by the Arizona state Senate.”
Democrats strongly oppose the Arizona audit, and have accused auditors of failing to implement property security measures.
The Arizona Democratic Party attempted to stop the audit but failed in court.
The Biden administration’s Department of Justice also has expressed concerns about the audit, claiming ballots and machines were not “being adequately safeguarded by contractors at an insecure facility, and are at risk of being lost, stolen, altered, compromised, or destroyed.”
Auditors disagreed, saying there was 24-hour armed security and other measures in place.
The audit, being held at Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, is on hold this week because of high school graduations. It’s expected to resume Monday.
In December, the Arizona Senate decided to audit election results from Maricopa County, where the population of approximately 4.5 million residents represents more than 60% of the state’s citizens, and whose registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than 100,000 as of last October.
A poll by HighGround Inc., an Arizona public affairs firm, found that 78% of Arizona Republicans believe fraud was a factor in Biden’s victory, a figure supported by other national polls showing strong GOP support for such claims.
Source: Newmax
