Overview
- Declassified FBI and intelligence records show roughly 633,000 voter registration records were extracted from a Maricopa County public-facing site in the weeks before the November 2020 election, with investigators identifying about 930 files that contained sensitive, nonpublic details.
- The FBI traced the activity to a Fountain Hills residence, interviewed a suspect who admitted writing an automated PowerShell script to scrape the site, and executed a search warrant that seized computers and hard drives.
- Multiple prosecutor offices reviewed the investigation but declined to bring charges and the FBI formally closed the case in 2023 after what the bureau described as years of effort to secure a prosecution.
- Maricopa County officials say only publicly available information was accessed, while the FBI and intelligence logs record nonpublic data were taken and flagged the intrusion as a high-priority cyber incident in the days around the 2020 vote.
- The records do not show any ballots or vote counts were altered, but the White House is using the disclosures to push policy and oversight changes, and the release renews privacy and federal‑state debates over control of voter rolls and accountability for election-data breaches.