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Arizona Senate president gets FBI subpoena for Trump-related records

Karen Fann initiated the Republican review of Maricopa County's election results. Feds are investigating the Trump White House role's in pressuring states.

PHOENIX — The FBI has subpoenaed records from the Republican leader of Arizona’s state Senate as well as another GOP senator, as part of a federal investigation into former President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign on state-level officials after the 2020 election. 

A spokeswoman for Senate President Karen Fann of Prescott confirmed the subpoena, which was first reported by the Yellow Sheet.

Fann initiated the months-long Republican review of the 2020 election results.

“I was not part of January 6, didn’t even know it was going on until after it happened,” Fann told the Yellow Sheet, a subscription-only publication of the Arizona Capitol Times.

“I saw it on the news like everybody else.”

Fann said she would cooperate with the documents request. She announced last November that she wouldn't seek re-election when her current term ends in January 2023.

Contacts With Trump, Giuliani

Public records obtained after the election show Fann had numerous contacts with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Fann told one constituent in a December 2020 email that she had “spoken with Mayor Giuliani at least six times over the past two weeks.” 

Fann told another constituent she had received “a personal call from President Trump thanking us for pushing to prove any fraud.”

Fann's emails also reveal that One America News personality Christina Bobb served as a go-between for the Senate president and Giuliani, according to an extensive file of emails compiled by American Oversight.

Townsend Complying With Subpoena

State Sen. Kelly Townsend of Mesa told 12 News she was complying with an FBI subpoena for copies of communications with Trump’s lawyers. Townsend said her staff had gone through all her emails and was sending them in.

The U.S. Department of Justice investigation of Trump’s pressure campaign is focusing on swing states like Arizona that secured Joe Biden’s victory.

Party Chair, Husband Subpoenaed 

Fann and Townsend are the latest Arizona Republicans to receive FBI subpoenas:

-Last week, state Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward and her husband, Michael Ward, were both subpoenaed in the DOJ investigation of phony electors. 

Federal authorities are investigating the Trump effort to create slates of fake Trump electors in battleground states that would have allowed Vice President Mike Pence to throw out the real slates of Biden electors when Pence certified the presidential election.

Kelli Ward led a meeting on Dec. 14, 2020, at the Republican Party's Phoenix headquarters where the 11 phony electors signed a fake document declaring themselves the official Arizona electors. 

The meeting was posted on social media.

The same day, the 11 Biden electors for Arizona met at an undisclosed location to formally cast their votes for Biden. The electoral vote is usually held at the State Capitol. It was moved for security reasons.

The Wards are fighting a subpoena for their phone records by the January 6th Select Committee. The case is tied up in Federal Court in Phoenix. 

Two other Republicans - Nancy Cottle and Loraine Pellegrino - who signed phony certificates for Arizona’s fake electors have also received DOJ subpoenas, according to the Washington Post.

They were listed as chairperson and secretary, respectively, of the group that signed the phony elector document.

Cottle and Pellegrino were also subpoenaed by the select committee. 

RELATED: Jan. 6 hearing takeaways: Angry Trump, dire legal warnings and ketchup

RELATED: Final Arizona election report finds no data issues from Maricopa County

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