Harassment Claims as Trump-Supported Group in Arizona Filming Ballot Boxes

A group supported by former President Donald Trump is filming ballot boxes in Arizona and other states.

A video posted on Twitter by ABC15 reporter Nicole Grigg showed a man and a woman with cameras outside the Maricopa County elections headquarters. Kari Lake, the Trump-backed Republican candidate for governor, is facing off against Secretary of State Katie Hobbs in a closely watched race for governor.

"They have their own cameras rolling, pointed right at the drop box," Grigg wrote. "A woman here says she is here to get Vitamin D."

A man told Grigg that he was with Clean Elections USA, a right-wing grassroots organization "committed to election integrity," according to its website.

"They are sitting outside the 75 foot limit and there are no reports of any interactions with voters," Garrett Archer, a data and political analyst for ABC 15, tweeted.

However, Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates said that election workers have been harassed as they come into work.

"We aren't going to stand by while our election workers who are your friends, family members and neighbors get harassed for doing their jobs," Gates wrote on Twitter on Wednesday. "When you observe elections, please do it respectfully."

At a press conference on Wednesday, Gates said: "We're running the most transparent election in Maricopa County's history. We're also protecting our elections workers. We can do both and if the campaigns have an issue, they can contact us. They don't need to go and send incendiary tweets."

Melody Jennings, the QAnon-linked founder of Clean Elections USA, wrote on Truth Social, Trump's social media platform, that news stations were "scoping out our box watchers" in Maricopa County.

She added: "What's super fun is that they are being incredible deterrents to mules!"

In another post, she said the media was "out in force filming our people at the Mesa Arizona drop box. We are filming them back. Get out there people."

Jennings has appeared on Steve Bannon's War Room podcast several times to promote the group in the past week.

She said she was inspired by 2000 Mules, a widely debunked film that was aggressively promoted by Trump to support his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him amid widespread fraud.

"We are gathering across the nation in every drop box state," Jennings told Bannon, a former Trump adviser, on his podcast on Monday.

"If you've got drop boxes outdoors, we're on it. We're aligning teams of hopefully up to 10, but you know, as many as we can get around each box, and we are actually making a difference. We're actually seeing mules be intimidated, you know, from doing their thievery. We're not intimidating voters but the mules do not want to be caught on film. And that's what we're doing."

Trump has shared several of Jennings' posts on his Truth Social platform over the past week, including clips of her speaking on Bannon's podcast.

Clean Elections USA and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors have been contacted for comment.