Two Maricopa County election workers spent the night of Oct. 7 doing their jobs. Two days later, a video of them was online under the word "BUSTED," with one of them named, and it went on to pass a million views on X.
The Recorder's Office sent it to the FBI. The FBI sent it to the Arizona Attorney General. The Attorney General's investigators found nothing wrong.
Now the county's elections department has put the whole episode in one sentence.
"In an election cycle, there is no after hours, and staff frequently are required to work late," Jennifer Liewer, Maricopa County's deputy elections director for communications, told The Arizona Inquirer on Oct. 29. The two employees, she said, were "performing authorized work to prepare non-tabulation equipment for the upcoming election."
What the video showed, and what it didn't
The footage was shot around 10:30 p.m. on Oct. 7 inside the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center, MCTEC. A group called We the People USA Alliance posted it on Oct. 9 with a siren emoji and "BUSTED."
According to Board of Supervisors Chair Kate Brophy McGee and Vice Chair Debbie Lesko, the workers were updating ballot-duplication software on a computer cut off from the internet and from the tabulators.
The employee named in the post had been targeted with false claims and threats once before, in 2021. The Inquirer is not naming that employee.
How it reached the FBI
Two of Recorder Justin Heap's top staff, chief of staff Sam Stone and chief deputy recorder Jeffrey Mason, filed the complaint with the FBI. Heap has confirmed it also went to the County Attorney.
The tip came from Shelby Busch, the group's founder and a Maricopa County Republican official. In March 2024, Busch said at a gathering that former Recorder Stephen Richer should be lynched. She later described the remark as "said in jest."
The FBI handed the matter to the Attorney General's office. In an Oct. 14 memo, Chief Special Agent Jim Cope wrote that the workers' activities were "consistent with their assigned duties." The FBI's file is closed.
Heap has said he knew about the video before it was posted. He has said he has no connection to Busch, that he still has questions, and that the matter is not over. His view of his office's role: "We did what I think we were required to do."
"Pick up the phone"
The Board chair's complaint is not that the video was investigated. It's that nobody at the Recorder's Office called the county first.
"He just needed to pick up the phone and call," Brophy McGee said. She has said the employees were put at risk and, in effect, doxed.
The Board learned of the referral from the County Attorney's office, not from Heap, with about a day's notice.
The threat ledger
The video is one entry in a longer October list for Arizona election offices.
Oct. 15: Staff in Secretary of State Adrian Fontes's office opened an envelope of white powder in the Executive Tower. The building was evacuated. The substance was non-toxic. The FBI and Postal Inspectors are investigating. More than 100 election offices nationwide were targeted with similar mailings; Fontes's office has not confirmed Arizona's was part of that wave.
Oct. 21: MCTEC was locked down for about 30 minutes, from roughly 12:30 p.m. to 1 p.m. Phoenix Police say officers got a call for unknown trouble at an apartment near the center just after 12:30. MCTEC was locked down out of an abundance of caution, officers cleared the apartment and found no threat, and the center resumed normal operations. No arrests have been reported.
Maricopa County itself has received no suspicious mail tied to the national wave, Liewer said.
How many threats against Maricopa election workers has the county logged this year, and how does that compare with 2022 and 2024? The county says that number is a public record, and that the only way to get it is to request it.
Whether the employee in the video has been threatened since Oct. 9, and what the county has done to protect them, the county would not say.
The numbers we don't have yet
One of the most basic facts about this cycle is still missing from public view: how many threats election workers have received. The county says that number is a public record and pointed us to a records request. We are requesting it.
Two people worked late on a county computer. It took the FBI and the Attorney General to establish what the elections department says is normal in October.
How we reported this: This story draws on written answers from the Maricopa County Elections Department and the Phoenix Police Department (Oct. 29), statements by the Recorder's Office, the Board of Supervisors and the Attorney General's office as published by KJZZ, KTAR, azfamily, FOX 10 and the Arizona Mirror, and a 2024 Axios report on Shelby Busch. We have not seen the full video or the FBI file. We are looking for the county's 2026 threat counts, and for anyone who works in Arizona elections and has been threatened this cycle: [email protected]. We contacted the Recorder's Office and the offices of Supervisors Brophy McGee and Thomas Galvin, and none had responded by publication. The Maricopa County Attorney's Office declined to answer, saying both the Board and the Recorder's Office are its clients and the questions fall under attorney-client privilege.