 Donald Trump Speaks During A Campaign Rally In Green Bay Wisconsin

The Washington Post

Gaza protest Columbia

Arizona Republican Senate Candidate Kari Lake Meets With Lawmakers At The Capitol

Stringer

Who will Trump choose for VP? Narrow the list with this quiz.

Republicans and Democrats vote in Pennsylvania primary elections

Robert F. Kennedy

For The Washington Post

Election 2024 Biden Alabama Ballot

Conservative Political Action Conference CPAC

New Hampshire primary 2024

Staff Photographer

Coronavirus Pandemic 2022 - Midterms

Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Biden is aiming increasingly personal and sarcastic jabs at Trump

Eric Adams’s condescending dismissal of the ‘children’ at Columbia

Election 2024 live updates: Trump holds rallies in Wisconsin, Michigan during court break

Use these 6 points to say no to a college you and your kid can’t afford

How this new rule protects retirement savers from costly advice

Borrowers, don’t miss this important student loan forgiveness deadline

Biden’s internet-for-all program needs Musk’s help

The tech billionaires who helped ban TikTok want to write AI rules for Trump

How to make the most of Passport DC’s free embassy tours

Where to watch the Kentucky Derby in D.C.

Chance to move over .500 slips away as Nats lose to reigning champs

France shows its anger on May Day ahead of Paris Olympics

One photo, one night in Rafah

Is Bougainville the next battleground between China and the U.S.?

Cat climbed into Amazon return box, found alive 630 miles away

I learned to heal my sadness by cradling dying chickens 

Brave Little Hunter is free: Baby orca escapes lagoon for open seas

UnitedHealth grew very big. Now, some lawmakers want to chop it down.

The new face of flooding

How celebrity tequilas are changing the very nature of tequila

A murder plot that cannot be ignored: India must come clean at last

How to confront antisemitism, deal with protests — and respect free speech

Is student loan debt an emergency? Take our quiz.

Adaptive adventures are making national parks more inclusive

Man arrested at Yellowstone for allegedly kicking bison while drunk

Southwest passengers now get a $75 voucher for big flight disruptions

Riding the rails with hobos and crust punks

In photos: Violence erupts at campuses as activists and counterprotesters clash

Drone video shows trapped baby orca in B.C. lagoon

Carolyn Hax: Too late to accept a decade-old apology, accidentally left unread?

I coach my son’s sports team. Why is he so disrespectful during practice?

Miss Manners: How to decline donation requests at checkout

See more coverage in your recommendations

Get the weekly Campaign Moment newsletter

Set alerts for major election developments

Election 2024

The Campaign Moment newsletter

Politics alerts

Cassidy Araiza

PHOENIX — A top leader of the national conservative group Turning Point Action, which has amplified false claims of election fraud by former president <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/donald-trump/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Donald Trump</a> and others, resigned Thursday after being accused of forging voter signatures on official paperwork so that he could run for reelection in the Arizona House.

State Rep. Austin Smith (R) — who was senior director at Turning Point Action, the campaign arm of Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA — was accused by a Democratic activist of submitting petition sheets with rows of voter names, addresses and signatures that “bear a striking resemblance” to Smith’s handwriting, according to a complaint. Smith “personally circulated multiple petition sheets bearing what appear to be forged voter signatures,” the complaint said.

The complaint was sent to the Arizona secretary of state, who forwarded it to the Arizona attorney general for review. State election officials do not assess the veracity of allegations made against candidates. A spokesperson for the state prosecutor’s office, which runs a team that focuses on claims of voter and election fraud after widespread claims following the 2020 election, declined to comment. Both state offices are overseen by Democrats.

Smith submitted his resignation to Turning Point Action on Thursday, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about it publicly. Smith also publicly ended his reelection campaign.

Smith did not respond to a request for comment.

In a statement, the first-term lawmaker said the allegations against him were “silly” and part of a “coordinated attack” by Democrats and “those unhappy with my politics.”

Smith is aligned with some of the most conservative members of the Arizona House — sometimes referred to as the “Freedom Caucus” of the larger Republican caucus — and he has previously derided signature-verification work by local election officials as “a joke.”

During his time with Turning Point Action, Smith worked to support the candidacies of conservatives who spread false information about elections. At a rally in Washington on Jan. 5, 2021, Smith tweeted a photo of himself speaking to “thousands of patriots.” In that since-deleted tweet, he urged followers “Don’t get comfortable” and to “fight like hell.” The next day, as Congress met to certify the 2020 election results, the U.S. Capitol came under attack.

Smith said the prospect of costly and public fallout from the allegations shaped his decision to drop out of the race.

“The recommendation I received most was that I bow out and live to fight another day,” Smith said in <a href="https://twitter.com/azaustinsmith/status/1780964857166356493/photo/1" target=_blank>a statement</a> posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. “I might be confident of victory, but all it would take is a judge believing any one person, and all would be lost. … To be better protected in the future, if and when I run again for something, I’ll rely exclusively on the online signature system, and eliminate paper petitions from my campaign. Then no one can make up any stories.”

The complaint alleged that Smith submitted multiple pages with dozens of forged signatures that he claimed to have collected, and it contained images of two of those pages.

Smith’s withdrawal drew immediate reaction from members of his own party, some of whom faced death threats and harassment for upholding the will of voters — and Republican losses — during the 2020 and 2022 elections.

Maricopa County Supervisor Clint Hickman (R), who lives in Smith’s district west of Phoenix, cast Smith as a hypocrite. Hickman rejected attempts by Trump to talk to him in the weeks after the then-president narrowly lost the 2020 election. Hickman <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/30/arizona-2020-election-violent-threats/" target=_blank>has faced death threats</a>, threats against his family and protests at his home. On Thursday, he called on Smith to resign from office.

“This is a man who has lied to the people of Legislative District 29 and the entire state about our election operations for at least three years,” Hickman said in a statement. “And now he is accused of lying about the signatures he personally collected to get on the ballot again. An investigation will reveal the truth.”

Scripps Howard Award for distinguished service to the First Amendment, 2021 (part of a team)

University of Idaho, BS in Journalism

Yvonne Wingett Sanchez writes about voting issues in Arizona for The Washington Post. She previously covered politics for the Arizona Republic.

Yvonne Wingett Sanchez

the-washington-post

TRUMPPHOENIX

staff

Live updates

Pennsylvania primary

Who is running

Key issues

Republican delegate tracker

2024 calendar

Balance of Power Pair

U.S. House Aggregate

U.S. Senate Aggregate

Elections

washpost

prism://prism.query/site-articles-only,/politics&limit=20

Cut through the 2024 election noise. Get The Campaign Moment newsletter.

Politics

Post Politics from The Washington Post is the source for political news headlines, in-depth politics coverage and political opinion, plus breaking news on the biden administration and White House, Congress, the Supreme Court, elections and more.

prism://prism.query/site,/politics/the-fix&limit=6

prism://prism.query/elections-feed-with-transparency-labels,News,Analysis,Perspective,Advice,Opinion/&limit=20

News about the 2024 election, plus video and opinions.

prism://prism.query/todays-articles-by-subtype-and-section,live-all,/elections,[now-4h+TO+now]/?limit=1