Trump Says Arizona Republican Who Slammed Election Audit 'Has Been Nothing But Trouble'

The audit is focused on Maricopa County, Arizona's largest, where then-Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden won by more than 2 percentage points in the November 2020 election, slammed by former President Donald Trump as "the most corrupt" vote in US history.

Ex-US President Donald Trump has lashed out at Arizona Republican Paul Boyer, in his latest attack against all those GOP members in the state against the ongoing partisan election audit.

In a message issued through Trump's Save America Political Action Committee (PAC) on Thursday, the former POTUS called Boyer a "RINO", or Republican in Name Only, and heaped praise on his primary challenger.

"Republican Arizona State Senator Paul Boyer […] is doing everything in his power to hold up the damning Forensic Audit of Maricopa County which has been taking place over the last 90 days. The people of Arizona are demanding it. Boyer has been nothing but trouble, and nobody knows why. All we demand is Voter Integrity! He is being primaried by a strong and highly respected challenger, former Arizona State Representative Anthony Kern", Trump said.

Boyer was quick to respond by posting a sarcastic tweet about America's southern border, reports the auditors were looking for bamboo fibres from China in ballots, and the 6 January Capitol riots.

"Had Trump built the wall like he promised, perhaps he could've prevented the 40k #BambooBallots from being imported into Arizona. And if he hadn't started an insurrection in D.C. and gotten kicked off here, I could've responded directly to him. So there's that", the state senator tweeted.

Building a wall on the US-Mexican border was one of Trump's core campaign promises, with the 45th president repeatedly arguing the wall helps to curb illegal immigration, human and drug trafficking.

Trump managed to see his pet project launched in 2019, with new barriers erected along 460 miles of rugged, hilly terrain and other areas controlled by private land owners. President Joe Biden signed a decree to scrap the wall's construction after he assumed office in January, which was followed by reports that POTUS may make an about-face on his move due to an increasing spike in migrant flows near the nation's southern border.

Boyer's bamboo ballots-related remarks refer to a conspiracy theory suggesting that 40,000 bamboo fibre ballots for Joe Biden were flown in from Asia and smuggled into Arizona's polls during the 3 November 2020 US presidential election.

As to the Capitol riots, the developments date to 6 January when hundreds of Trump supporters besieged the US Capitol to stop Congress from certifying the results of the November election, an attack that claimed the lives of at least five people, also resulting in widespread damage and vandalism.

A mob of supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump fight with members of law enforcement at a door they broke open as they storm the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, U.S., January 6, 2021.

© REUTERS / Leah Millis

Despite then-President Trump, via his now-suspended Twitter account, later urging his supporters to go home, he was impeached for a second time over accusations of "incitement of insurrection". Trump's second impeachment trial in the US Senate, which he slammed as a "hoax" and a "witch hunt", came to an end on 13 February after only 57 US Senators voted to convict the ex-POTUS.

The 45th president's remarks on Thursday come after Boyer told The New York Times in May that the Arizona audit "makes us look like idiots".

"Looking back, I didn't think it would be this ridiculous. It's embarrassing to be a state senator at this point", he added.

In a separate development in May, Trump slammed some of his own party members as "weak" and "stupid" for failing to address the important issue of the Arizona audit.

Arizona's Maricopa County is currently conducting an audit into the 2020 election vote that put Joe Biden ahead of Donald Trump with over 45,000 votes in the state in November 2020. The move is opposed by the GOP-dominated Maricopa Board of Supervisors and has been described by the body as a "sham".