In December, a state judge had knocked down a previous effort by the Senate to obtain ballot images and tabulating machines from Maricopa, saying the subpoena was improperly filed. State and federal judges had rejected lawsuits challenging the results. A hand recount of a sampling of ballots had confirmed the accuracy of Biden’s victory. Trump had narrowly lost the state, thanks largely to Biden’s 45,000-vote margin in the county, home to Phoenix and more than 60 percent of Arizonans. Republicans in the Arizona Senate subpoenaed Maricopa County, demanding that it turn over its nearly 2.1 million paper ballots, which had been packed up in cardboard boxes and stored away in a facility known as the Vault. Six days after the insurrection, Trump’s election lies bloomed anew in Phoenix. “We’re all going to have to eat the depression that he’s going to be leaving office.” “I don’t see how that’s possible,” he recalled thinking. Some of his bus mates clung to the hope that Trump would somehow remain president. Emerging from the building, Hodgkins had seen people brawling and had learned that a woman had been shot. What felt like a strange dream in that moment had started to curdle into something far darker almost immediately. The crane operator, then 38, had followed the mob into the Capitol and ended up in the well of the Senate, holding his Trump flag next to the desk where Vice President Mike Pence had been sitting just 40 minutes earlier. 7, Paul Hodgkins Paul Hodgkins Close The 38-year-old crane operator from Tampa traveled to Washington to show his support for Trump after absorbing false claims that the election was rigged - a decision that would drastically upend his life. 6, only to arrive home to find two sheriff’s deputies waiting in an unmarked car in his driveway.Īs his bus trundled south toward Florida on Jan. 7 in a house that was not his own.Īfter a grueling year as chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, the Republican had eagerly handed off his gavel at a long-planned ceremony on the morning of Jan. Two thousand miles away, in the western suburbs of Phoenix, Clint Hickman Clint Hickman Close As chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in 2020, the longtime Republican resisted Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results. (Erin Patrick O'Connor and Whitney Shefte/The Washington Post Caitlin O’Hara for The Washington Post Shealah Craighead/White House) In June 2020, he had greeted President Donald Trump when he visited Phoenix. (Erin Patrick O'Connor and Whitney Shefte/The Washington Post Caitlin O’Hara for The Washington Post Shealah Craighead/White House) Clint Hickman, chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, voted to certify Joe Biden's win in the Arizona county. Clint Hickman, chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, voted to certify Joe Biden's win in the Arizona county.

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