Scoop: Arizona GOP insurance paid $1M for 2020 electors' legal fees

State of play: Shortly after vacating her post as AZGOP chair last month, Swoboda informed executive committee members in an email obtained by Axios that the party had maxed out its liability policy covering directors and officers, prompting a spike in the cost of coverage.

• Swoboda's email included a spreadsheet detailing $1 million in payments to seven law firms and a data collection and storage company.
• The payments ranged from March 2023 to December 2024.
• Most of the payments were for legal representation in federal investigations that predated the electors' April 2024 indictment in Arizona.

Swoboda wrote that she renewed the director and officer policy in fall 2024 to ensure no coverage break before the presidential election, but the rates were unsustainable, exceeding the policy's expected value.

• Swoboda declined to renew the policy last fall.
• The party still has a general liability policy, but not director and officer coverage. Swoboda's email said the latter would've cost $52,000, compared to about $37,500 for general liability.
• She said she wasn't informed of payments that were requested while she was chair, a tenure that began in January 2024, and didn't learn of them until she inquired last October about the cost of renewing the policy.

What they're saying: State Sen. Jake Hoffman (R-Queen Creek), one of the 2020 Republican electors, told Axios the AZGOP's D&O policy covered the electors because they were officially acting on the party's behalf.

• He said increased insurance costs for directors and officers have been a problem for the GOP in many states due to "Democrats' weaponization of government against Republicans."

By the numbers: Federal campaign finance reports show the AZGOP paid more than $64,000 to insurance financing company IPFS in 2025 and about $82,000 in 2024, compared to roughly $17,000 in 2023 to IPFS and another insurance company.

• Swoboda declined to comment on the matter to Axios, but confirmed that IPFS financed the liability policy for the AZGOP.

Zoom in: The majority of the payments predated the April 2024 indictments, and some afterward were for services rendered before the criminal charges. Others were made to attorneys who represented electors after their indictments.

• Laurin Mills of Werther & Mills, whose firm represented the electors during congressional and U.S. Department of Justice probes but not the Arizona case, told Axios that the insurance company authorized payments in the summer of 2022, under former chair Kelli Ward.

• Werther & Mills was co-counsel with Davillier Law Group in Phoenix, which both received direct payments from the AZGOP. Mills said insurance only covered the DOJ investigation, not the congressional committee investigation.
• The largest recipient was Complete Discovery Source Inc., a New York legal data management company that was paid about $400,000.

Former AZGOP chair Robert Graham told Axios he viewed the use of the party's insurance to pay for electors' legal counsel as unusual given that most had no fiduciary or day-to-day governance responsibilities.

• He called the total the AZGOP paid for liability insurance in 2024 and 2025 "crazy."
• Sergio Arellano, who replaced Swoboda as chair in late January, did not respond to comment requests about the party's current insurance situation.

Catch up quick: Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is awaiting a ruling from the Arizona Supreme Court on whether she has to remand the fake electors case back to the grand jury.

• Elector Lorraine Pellegrino pleaded guilty last August to one misdemeanor charge of filing a false instrument, and Mayes dropped charges against elector Jim Lamon in December.
• Former Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis agreed to cooperate with the investigation in exchange for the dismissal of her charges last August.
• The remaining defendants have pleaded not guilty and haven't been convicted of any crimes in the case.