Maricopa County didn’t apologize to Trump after uncovering fraud in 2020 election, despite claims

Claim:

Maricopa County Elections in Arizona issued an apology to U.S. President Donald Trump after officials presented evidence showing state leaders ordered thousands of Trump voters’ ballots in the 2020 election to be destroyed and also to count immigrants’ illegally cast votes for Joe Biden.

Rating:

Ahead of the 2026 mideterm elections, people shared a purported “breaking” rumor alleging that Maricopa County Elections in Arizona issued an apology to President Donald Trump after officials made a striking discovery regarding the 2020 election results. The final tally showed Trump losing Arizona to former President Joe Biden by just under 11,000 votes.

According to the rumor, officials presented evidence that Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat who in 2020 was Arizona’s secretary of state, and former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, a Republican, ordered the destruction of tens of thousands of Trump voters’ ballots and also to count of tens of thousands of votes that immigrants lacking permanent legal status illegally cast to help elect Biden.

Snopes readers asked about this matter via email and searches.

This rumor was false. Searches for proof failed to find any credible sources reporting about Maricopa County Elections issuing an apology to Trump about large-scale voter fraud in the 2020 election. Instead, those queries indicated the original post came from a user who has shared similar misinformation before, including a false rumor about Georgia’s 2020 election results.

People sharing this story copied and pasted the same text, which touched on Trump’s false, oft-repeated claim that officials engaged in massive election fraud in 2020 — supposedly resulting in a “stolen election.” The Associated Press extensively investigated Trump’s claims involving battleground states and found no evidence of any large-scale fraud.

We emailed Maricopa County Elections to ask if the office could confirm that it did not issue an apology to Trump. We also emailed the White House to ask about this rumor and will update this article if we receive any further information.

Researching the rumor

Searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo for keywords related to the rumor failed to locate any news media outlets credibly reporting about Maricopa County Elections issuing an apology to Trump — including from conservative publications and outlets supporting the Trump administration.

Instead, the searches found numerous social media users reposting the claim, for example on Facebook (archived), Gettr (archived) and X (archived). That “breaking” rumor read as follows:

🚨#BREAKING: The Maricopa County Board of Elections has issued an apology to President Trump, claiming that local officials presented evidence that then Secretary of State (now Governor) Katie Hobbs and then Speaker of the Arizona House Rusty Bowers personally ordered them to destroy tens of thousands of mail-in ballots for President Trump and to count tens of thousands cast by illegal aliens for Joe Biden in Arizona’s largest county during the 2020 election.

This is described as outcome-determinative fraud by those entrusted to conduct, oversee, and certify the vote; Hobbs and Bowers are alleged to have been paid by at least three hostile foreign governments, the George Soros Open Society Foundation, and the DNC in exchange for rigging the 2020 election in Arizona.

Simply put, there is now irrefutable and indisputable proof that President Trump won the state in that stolen election, spoken by the very people who counted the ballots.

LOCK THESE TREASONOUS CROOKS UP NOW! 💪🏻🔥🇺🇸

The posts improperly labeled the county’s elections body, officially named Maricopa County Elections, as the “Maricopa County Board of Elections.” The body’s website displays a footer reading, “Elections in Maricopa County are overseen by both the County Board of Supervisors and the County Recorder.”

Apparent origins of rumor

Searches of X for the above posts’ copied-and-pasted text indicated a user named Joshua Hall (@JoshHall2024) first posted the rumor (archived) on March 19. Hall’s post also began with the word “breaking.” We found the claim was neither breaking nor true, whether in March or this month.

(@JoshHall2024 via X)

According to Hall’s own posts, he appeared to be the same Joshua Hall that a judge sentenced to 20 months in prison for, as the Justice Department announced, “making threats to kill a member of the United States Congress” — fomer Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif. — and “impersonating family members of the then-President of the United States on social media to fraudulently raise funds for a fictitious political organization.”

Trump has at least once shared a screenshot on Truth Social (archived) of one of Hall’s X posts from December (archived) promoting a false claim about Georgia twice tallying hundreds of thousands of votes. That post said the state owed Trump an apology.

In March, Hall posted a newer iteration of the Georgia rumor (archived) similar to the one about Arizona, falsely claiming the Fulton County Board of Elections said it owed Trump an apology.

We privately messaged Hall to ask for evidence to support the rumor and have not received a response. He has not made any new X posts since July; he reportedly faces charges including stalking and witness intimidation, and jail records in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, show a man with the same name in custody.

‘Unsupported by factual evidence’

In early March — just days before Hall’s X post about Maricopa County — the FBI reportedly subpoenaed 2020 elections records to continue investigating Trump’s unfounded claims of fraud.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, issued a statement in response, repeating details of elections officials’ exhaustive investigations and calling the claims “unsupported by factual evidence”:

The 2020 General Election in Arizona has been exhaustively reviewed. Multiple audits, court proceedings, and independent investigations — including those pursued by members of the same political party of the President — found no evidence of fraud sufficient to alter the outcome. These findings are not in dispute by any credible authority. The election results were certified, litigated, and affirmed.

In fact, under the direction of my predecessor, Attorney General Mark Brnovich, agents and support staff of the Arizona Attorney General’s Office spent over 10,000 hours investigating voting irregularities and alleged instances of illegal voting by high-profile election deniers. Complaints and allegations submitted to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office by members of the public were also unsupported by factual evidence.

On Oct. 5, Trump criticized Maricopa County elections officials for sending out more than 3,000 ballots six days early. The Maricopa County Recorder’s Office issued a statement saying that an election services company mistakenly mailed the ballots early, that the error “affected only the timing of the mailing” and that “the correct ballots were mailed to the correct voters.”

For further reading, we previously reported about a rumor claiming officials found 712,152 new votes for Trump in Arizona for the 2020 election.

Sources