Doug Ducey is talking to Jack Smith's investigators. That's a big uh-oh for Donald Trump

Former Gov. Doug Ducey has (finally) been contacted by the special prosecutor investigating Donald Trump’s role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

“Yes, he’s been contacted,” Daniel Scarpinato, who served as Ducey’s gubernatorial spokesman, told me, confirming a statement he first made to CNN. “He’s been responsive, and just as he’s done since the election, he will do the right thing.”

That gulp you just heard?

That was Trump, envisioning the feel of the legal noose that’s tightening around his neck.

My only question to special prosecutor Jack Smith would be this:  What took you so long to get to the outrage of what happened here?

Trump pressured Arizona officials hard

Arizona was clearly at the center of the pressure campaign by Trump and his allies to steal a second term.

From fake electors to cajoling phone calls to a phony Senate election audit — one bought and paid for by Trump’s key allies — Arizona always figured big in the scheme to overturn the election.

Who can forget Ducey’s cellphone ringing out with “Hail to the Chief” — the ring tone he’d assigned to calls from the POTUS — even as he was about to publicly sign the document certifying that Joe Biden won Arizona?

Or the phone calls from Trump and his allies — including then state-GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward — to the chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, trying to delay Biden's win?

Ward, at one point, actually demanded that the county stop counting votes.

Or the fake electors organized by the Arizona Republican Party — party officials, elected leaders and others who signed documents avowing that they were duly elected by voters to cast Arizona’s 11 electoral votes for Trump?

Or the 29 Republican legislators who signed onto a  “Joint Resolution of the 54th Legislature” urging Vice President Mike Pence to accept those 11 “alternate” electoral votes for Trump?

Efforts to throw the vote were widely detailed

Who can forget Reps. Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar, leaders in the drive to reject the legitimate electoral college vote in Arizona and elsewhere, as part of a scheme to throw the election into Congress and ultimately to Trump?

Even as the Trump mob was breaking into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Gosar was on the House floor outright lying about Arizona’s vote, claiming that “over 400,000 mail-in ballots were altered, switched from President Trump to Vice President Biden or completely erased from President Trump’s total.”

Then there was Senate President Karen Fann, a previously well-regarded Republican who bowed to a pressure campaign by Trump allies and initiated an audit of the election, run by — and for — Trump’s allies.

This, even though every pre-and post-election test and audit required by state law turned up precisely no evidence that there was a problem.

Senate 'audit' texts: Judge releases some, keeps others private

And surely no one has forgotten former House Speaker Rusty Bowers’ utterly unsurprising testimony to the House Select committee investigating Jan. 6, wherein the staunchly conservative Republican described repeated attempts by Trump and his co-conspirators to get him to participate in a scheme to overturn Arizona’s presidential election results.

The phone calls from Trump, beginning in November 2020 and extending to Jan. 6, 2021, when Bowers said Biggs asked him in a call to join his effort to set aside the certified results.

Bowers and the county supervisors refused and stood tall.

Ducey never helped, but never blew the whistle

Meanwhile, Ducey has stood silently, refusing to throw in with Trump’s scheme but also declining to blow the whistle on the now-former president’s efforts to overturn Arizona’s 2020 election results.

Declining even as Trump savaged him pretty much every chance he got.

Now, it appears Ducey is ready to get to blowing that whistle, and that’s a good thing for America and for Arizona.

We deserve to know the truth of what really happened here.

The Washington Post recently reported that Ducey has privately acknowledged to a donor that Trump pressured him to deny Biden his win in Arizona.

The Post, citing the donor and two others, reported that Trump called to Ducey in late 2020 and pushed him to find “fraudulent votes” to reverse the election results.

He also tapped Pence to “prod” Ducey to find evidence that would give him the win.

He's not the only Arizonan who should testify

Ducey reportedly told the donor he was surprised that Smith’s team had not contacted him about those phone calls from Trump and Pence.

Until now.

Smith should send him a ticket to D.C. to come testify before the grand jury.

Heck, he should charter a plane and haul in the entire cabal of Arizona leaders who were ready, willing but fortunately unable to execute the plan to overturn democracy in Arizona.

Ducey never went along with it, but far too many others did. And shame on them.

Now is their chance to come clean.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Doug Ducey is talking to Jack Smith. That's an uh-oh for Trump