Andy Biggs Election Denial Lies Arizona

Andy Biggs Says He Never Commented on the January 6 Pardons. Two Months Before Them, His Account Demanded Trump Pardon 'All J6 Political Prisoners.'

At a public safety forum in Phoenix, Biggs called Katie Hobbs' claim that he went to a D.C. jail to greet pardoned rioters 'an absolute lie,' and said he never weighed in on the pardons. Arizona Public Media found the November 2024 post on his own X account.

MAGA Report Cards · Aug 28, 2026

Andy Biggs Says He Never Commented on the January 6 Pardons. Two Months Before Them, His Account Demanded Trump Pardon 'All J6 Political Prisoners.'

Andy Biggs is the Republican nominee for governor of Arizona. On Tuesday, August 25, 2026, he and Governor Katie Hobbs both took questions at the Arizona Police Association's public safety forum at Arizona State University's downtown Phoenix campus. Forum rules kept them apart — Biggs answered first and left the room before Hobbs spoke, and the two never shared the stage.

Hobbs used her turn to go after his record on January 6. Biggs answered afterward, in a press scrum, and what he denied was the last of her charges — that he had gone to a Washington, D.C. jail to greet pardoned rioters.

"Well, what she said is that I stood outside a DC jail to greet J-6ers who'd received a pardon. That's what she said. That is an absolute lie. It is a fabrication. It's about as nutty as I've heard from her this campaign."

Asked whether he had supported the pardons Trump issued to people convicted over the Capitol attack, he said:

"I never made comment on the pardon. Some of them deserved it, some of them didn't, but that was his decision to make, not mine."

Arizona Public Media went and looked. On November 26, 2024, Biggs' own X account posted: "President Trump must pardon all J6 political prisoners."

That is a comment on the pardons. It is also a demand for them, made nearly two months before they happened, using the phrase Hobbs said he used.

What Hobbs actually accused him of

Hobbs' charge at the forum had three parts: that Biggs voted against Congressional Gold Medals for the Capitol Police, that he has called January 6 defendants "political prisoners," and that he was outside a Washington, D.C. jail greeting their supporters when the pardons came down.

The first is a matter of public record, and it happened twice. In March 2021 Biggs was one of just 12 House Republicans to vote against awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to the officers who defended the Capitol. In June 2021 he was one of 21.

The second is the November 2024 post above.

The third is the one he actually denied, and it is genuinely contested. NBC4 Washington reported that "Republican Rep. Andy Biggs, Rep. Lauren Boebert and Rep. Chip Roy were outside the jail" on January 21, 2025 as pardoned defendants were released, and KJZZ reported that NBC News said the same thing live that day. But Arizona Public Media, which called it a possible case of mistaken identity, points out that The New York Times described the same scene without him: "Three Republican members of Congress stopped by — Representatives Eli Crane of Arizona, Chip Roy of Texas and Lauren Boebert of Colorado." AZPM found no photograph of Biggs there either, in the video NBC posted or on Getty.

So Biggs aimed "an absolute lie" and "a fabrication" at the jail claim alone. The two charges he did not call a lie are documented in his own voting record and on his own X account. On the one he did deny, two NBC outlets put him there and the Times put someone else.

The rest of the record he's denying

The Gold Medal votes are not the whole of it. Biggs' record on the 2020 election and the attack that followed is one of the longest of anyone on this site.

He was one of the 34 Republican members of Congress who exchanged texts with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows about overturning the election result, before and after January 6.
Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander said Biggs was one of "the four guys who came up with a January 6 event", along with Paul Gosar and Mo Brooks.
Arizona's Republican House Speaker Rusty Bowers testified that Biggs called him on the morning of January 6, 2021 asking him to back decertifying Arizona's electors. Bowers refused.
He voted to reject Biden's win, objecting to the electors of both Arizona and Pennsylvania.
He voted against impeaching Trump for inciting the mob, and against creating an independent bipartisan commission to investigate the attack.
When the January 6 committee subpoenaed him, he refused to comply. In December 2022 it referred him to the House Ethics Committee for sanctions, one of four Republicans it named.

Why a police forum is the wrong room for this

Hobbs' line at the forum was short:

"I will never stand with folks who assault officers. I will stand with officers every single day."

Biggs had just spent that forum in front of a room of police chiefs and officers in a race for governor, and told reporters on his way out that Hobbs' account of his January 6 record was a fabrication. He had voted twice against giving those officers a medal, and once against creating the commission that would have examined what happened to them.

He is not the only Republican on this year's ballot with a January 6 pardon problem. In North Carolina, Michael Whatley defended the January 6 pardons — including the ones that freed men later charged with child sex crimes.

What the record shows

Andy Biggs told reporters at a public safety forum that Katie Hobbs' claim he went to the D.C. jail was "an absolute lie," and that he had never commented on Trump's pardons. His X account had demanded, on November 26, 2024, that Trump "pardon all J6 political prisoners." He voted twice against awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to the police who defended the Capitol, in a group of 12 and then a group of 21. Two NBC outlets reported he was outside the D.C. jail as pardoned defendants were released; The New York Times named a different Arizona Republican.