‘Don’t have the president call’: Arizona official ignored Trump attempts to sway results, report says

A month after Arizona certified its election results in the 2020 presidential race, Donald Trump tried to call a top state election official twice, but was ignored, according to a new report.

On New Year’s Eve, two weeks after the Electoral College confirmed Joe Biden’s victory, the outgoing president tried to reach Clint Hickman, the Republican chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in the populous district containing the city of Phoenix.

But Mr Hickman intentionally ignored the calls, according to The Arizona Republic, which first reported the news.

“I told people, ‘Please don’t have the president call me,’” he said, adding that he’d seen reporting on similar calls Mr Trump made in Georgia and didn’t want to be involved in a similar scandal.

“I had seen what occurred in Georgia and I was like, ‘I want no part of this madness and the only way I enter into this is I call the president back.’”

The Arizona calls, discovered via a Freedom of Information Act request, came as Trump backers like Rudy Giuliani and the state GOP chairman were pressing for an investigation into Arizona’s election results, which officials of both parties had already certified as free and fair.

Liz Harrington, a spokesperson for Mr Trump, declined to comment on the calls to The New York Times, but criticised the state’s election process, saying, “it’s no surprise Maricopa County election officials had no desire to look into significant irregularities during the election”.

Top Trump White House and campaign officials pressured Fox News to reverse its early projection of a Joe Biden win in the state as well, with Mr Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner reportedly in contact with Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch the night of the announcement. Despite Mr Trump’s frequent, baseless claims that the election was unfair, it was actually Mr Trump himself who attempted on multiple occasions to unduly influence the election results.

Mr Trump also pressured officials in another swing state, Georgia, about the election results. At the beginning of January, Mr Trump was recorded urging the state’s Republican head of elections to “find 11,780” votes, which would put him one vote ahead of Joe Biden, who carried the state. Officials in Georgia have opened a criminal investigation against Mr Trump for his contact with state election officials. Following the 6 January pro-Trump riot at the US Capitol, Mr Trump acknowledged a new administration was taking power, but he’s never truly conceded.

As he heads across the country on a multi-state comeback tour, it’s clear the former president is making challenging the validity of the 2020 election a key part of his political message going forward.

“We’ll never stop fighting for the true results in this election,” Mr Trump told a crowd in Ohio last month. “I’m not the one trying to undermine American democracy. I’m the one that’s trying to save American democracy.”