Newly Declassified FBI Files Reveal Massive Maricopa Voter Data Breach – 633k Records – But No One Was Prosecuted
The White House has released a series of now-declassified documents regarding the 2020 election. In one document specifically, details surrounding a mysterious incident that took place in Maricopa County have been revealed.
The newly-declassified documents show that a hacker was able to obtain approximately 633,000 records of Maricopa County voters, including information on 930 voters that was not publicly available, including domestic abuse victims, according to a letter from FBI Director Kash Patel to the White House Task Force on Government Transparency.
However, according to an interview in November 2020 with a redacted name, the hacker believed they had extracted 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 files, estimated to be four gigabytes of data, using a PowerShell script to exploit the Maricopa County Recorder’s website.
Maricopa County reported the intrusion through the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center on November 2. By Election Day, November 3, the incident was being circulated among federal election-security officials.
The subject attempted to eliminate the locally and remotely stored copies before the FBI executed its search warrant. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Arizona, the then-Republican-led Attorney General of Arizona, the Maricopa County District Attorney, and the Pinal County District Attorney all declined to prosecute the hacker, despite having evidence and a confession from the hacker.