Trump campaign moved to quash suspected disloyalty in AZ GOP, NBC reports

Former President Donald Trump's campaign mobilized to quash suspected disloyalty within the Arizona GOP this week, but walked back the effort within days because the matter was resolved, NBC News has reported.

The controversy has bitterly divided the state party in recent weeks, with both sides claiming to be carrying out Trump's will.

Party insiders had speculated that several members of Arizona’s delegation to next month's Republican National Convention in Milwaukee were involved in a plot to undermine the former president.

The suspected ringleader was Shelby Busch, chair of the elections-focused group We The People AZ Alliance PAC and the chair of Arizona’s delegation to the GOP convention. She had come under suspicion from some factions of the party because of her ties to Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, and was accused of exhibiting what one circulating newsletter deemed “anti-Republican behavior” within the Maricopa County Republican Committee.

Busch’s critics accused her of lobbying for a rule change at the Milwaukee convention that would allow delegates to nominate someone other than Trump.

Some believed that unruly delegates wanted to put Flynn into nomination for the ticket, NBC News reported.

Reached for comment, Busch identified herself on the phone to The Arizona Republic but said she was not immediately available for an interview.

This week, at the request of a Trump campaign official, “alternate delegates” from Arizona challenged the status of the delegates suspected of disloyalty, according to the NBC News report.

They did so “to prevent unnecessary distractions from being organized during President Trump’s formal nomination,” the Trump campaign’s political director, James Blair, wrote in a social media post on Thursday afternoon.

Busch’s organization has claimed that she, not the challengers, had the greater loyalty to Trump. We the People AZ charged the plan to boot her and other delegates was an effort to replace “pro-Trump delegates” with “their preferred RNC loyalists who not only lost their elections, but are also suspected of being part of an anti-Trump establishment group,” they wrote in a June 17 social media post.

The group said that all of Arizona’s GOP delegates were invited to the planning meeting that drew suspicion, and dismissed the idea that they had any intention of unbinding delegates from Trump.

“Common sense would show that if a plan to unbind delegates were at play by us as our accusers claim, we would not invite sitting legislators and known and very public political adversaries to observe,” the statement continued.

The Trump campaign has since called on the six alternate delegates to drop their challenges.

“Given AZ delegation chair Busch’s public clearing of the air and commitment to following the campaign’s lead, we feel it is appropriate for the six to withdraw their challenges,” Blair wrote Thursday.

All six challenges had been dropped as of Friday morning, NBC News reported.

Busch has been a vocal proponent of unfounded conspiracy theories related to elections security and is an ally of U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Trump campaign targeted disloyalty in Arizona GOP, NBC reports