Newly declassified FBI documents reveal a hacker stole hundreds of thousands of Maricopa County voter records days before the 2020 election — and every prosecutor from both parties refused to bring charges, even after the suspect confessed and destroyed evidence.
The breach exposed sensitive data on domestic violence victims and law enforcement officers, and was known to federal election-security officials by Election Day. Yet the agency responsible for election integrity told the public 2020 was "the most secure in American history" — a claim the declassified record now contradicts.
According to a letter from FBI Director Kash Patel to the White House Task Force on Government Transparency, the hacker obtained approximately 633,000 voter records from the Maricopa County Recorder's website. Of those, 930 contained sensitive, non-public information — including data on domestic abuse victims, judges, and law enforcement officers.
The hacker told the FBI they believed they extracted between 1 million and 2 million files, roughly four gigabytes of data, using a PowerShell script to exploit the website, according to the declassified interview documents reviewed by the Gateway Pundit.
Maricopa County reported the intrusion through the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center on November 2, 2020. By Election Day, the incident was circulating among federal election-security officials. The public heard nothing.
No contemporaneous public acknowledgement of the breach has been identified from CISA. Instead, then-Director Chris Krebs declared the 2020 election "the most secure in American history" — while his agency knew a hacker had exploited a county website and exposed hundreds of thousands of voter records. At the time, reporting assured Americans the stolen voter information was publicly available. The declassified files prove that was false.
Then came the prosecutorial shrug. The hacker admitted to the crime, then deleted and reformatted hard drives and wiped Google Cloud data — destruction of evidence while acknowledging law enforcement was coming. The FBI executed a search warrant. The case had a confession. And nobody would touch it.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in the District of Arizona declined. The Arizona Attorney General — then Republican-led — declined. The Maricopa County District Attorney declined. The Pinal County District Attorney declined. An administration official told the Daily Caller the FBI tried until 2023 to get someone to prosecute. No one would.
The Daily Caller reported that the Biden Justice Department specifically declined to bring charges. The Gateway Pundit identified the suspect as Elliot Kerwin, a 56-year-old IT expert in Fountain Hills, though the declassified documents do not name him directly. The hacker claimed they did not edit any information and did not obtain ballots, according to an administration official.
President Trump addressed the broader issue in a July 16 primetime address, claiming China compromised voter files of 220 million Americans. When the Daily Caller pressed him on consequences for China, Trump was notably muted: "We're going to talk to them about it. It took place a long time ago. I think China is maybe a little bit different today than it was then."
The question isn't whether the system was breached — the FBI's own files confirm it was, and that the people in charge knew it. The question is why every prosecutor in Arizona, Republican and Democrat alike, let a confessed hacker walk free, and why the agency tasked with election security assured Americans everything was airtight when it wasn't.
