A draft report of an election review in Arizona’s largest county by supporters of former President Donald Trump found that President Joe Biden did indeed win the 2020 race there, an embarrassing end to a bizarre quest to find evidence supporting Trump’s false claim that he lost because of fraud.
The final report was set to be released Friday, the result of a monthslong partisan review funded partly by taxpayers. The draft circulated Thursday night, showing the results of the review’s chaotic hand-count of all 2.1 million ballots in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix. The tally in the draft document showed a net gain of 360 votes for Biden over the official results.
The Maricopa County attorney’s office provided the draft to The Associated Press. Republican Senate President Karen Fann said in a text message that the document was “a leaked draft from three days ago” but did not dispute its authenticity. She would not say if the vote tally in the draft had changed over the course of the week, saying she had signed a nondisclosure agreement.