Stephen Richer

- A Republican election official in a key swing state fighting against election lies, this week on "Firing Line."

All eyes are back on Arizona, a state Joe Biden narrowly won in 2020, handing Donald Trump a loss he was not willing to accept.

- If we are right about the fraud, Joe Biden can't be president.

- [Margaret] On Wednesday, an Arizona grand jury indicted Rudy Giuliani and other members of Trump's inner circle in connection with a fake elector scheme that would've illegally awarded Arizona's 11 electors to Trump.

Stephen Richer is a top election official in the state, himself a Republican, who took office in January, 2021 as election lies hit overdrive.

As Recorder of Maricopa County, one of the country's largest voting jurisdictions, Richer refused to say that Trump had won.

- I doubt that anyone in the country has looked at the 2020 election in Arizona more than I have, and it checks out 100%.

- [Margaret] His defense of the integrity of Arizona's elections led to death threats, a censure from Arizona's GOP, and a lawsuit with Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake.

As Richer faces a far-right primary challenger in his reelection bid and the Arizona GOP dismisses the new indictment as a blatant abuse of power, what does Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer say now?

- [Announcer] "Firing Line with Margaret Hoover" is made possible in part by Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, The Fairweather Foundation, The Tepper Foundation, Peter and Mary Kalikow, The Asness Family Foundation, The Beth and Ravenel Curry Foundation, The McKenna Family Foundation, Charles R. Schwab, The Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fund for Strategic Innovation, and by the following.

[upbeat music] Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc. and by Pfizer Inc. [upbeat music] - Stephen Richer, welcome to "Firing Line."

- Thank you very much.

- This week, an Arizona grand jury indicted 18 people, including attorneys and aides of former President Trump and Republicans who served as fake electors in 2020.

The charges against them include fraud, conspiracy, and forgery.

What is your reaction to this indictment?

- This one is particularly momentous for me for everything that we've been talking about for the past 3 1/2 years, and it does give some resolution, it gives some accountability.

- What does it mean to you that you're seeing this degree of accountability from the judiciary branch- - So I know almost everyone that's named in that complaint, and some of those people who were targets are people who would never otherwise commit a crime in their life, and it just impresses upon me how much this has destroyed some lives, and everyone ultimately bears responsibility for their own actions, and I'm not trying to strip anyone of agency, or of their own culpability, but I have some measure of sympathy for somebody who just gets his, or her cues from people that they trust, or reads stories.

But where I have no patience is for the leaders who lead them down this road, and then abandon them, quite frankly.

- To that end, unlike in Georgia, this indictment does not name Donald Trump.

Is he the mastermind in your view of all of this?

- I mean, this is all built out from, of course, Donald Trump's unwillingness to accept his defeat, despite having ample knowledge to the contrary that it was a free and fair election.

So, so ultimately, yes, and then there were agents who were facilitators.

- The indictment alleges that these 11 individuals had schemed to create a false set of electors- - Yeah.

- Whose votes in the Electoral College could then be counted for Trump-Pence instead of Biden-Harris, thus throwing the election to Donald Trump.

- Right, we were all getting text messages.

Some of the board members were getting calls from Rudy Giuliani, from the President of the United States to the effect of, "We're all Republicans, "we need to do something about this."

And- - And so, the Board of Supervisors then reached out to you, the incoming Recorder of Maricopa County, who is also a Republican.

- Yes, and the board was asked to take express actions, such as stop the count.

- Mmm-hmm, which they refused to do, as the indictment explains.

- Which they refused to do.

- At the time the board was reaching out to you, what did they tell you about the pressure campaign they were experiencing?

- That it was significant, that it was unrelenting, that it had no basis in fact, or in law, that they put me in touch immediately with civil counsel for the Maricopa County Attorney's Office, because they said, "You're gonna start getting these calls, "and we'd recommend you not take them "without legal counsel on the line.

"We're already being asked to do things "that we don't feel comply with law, "and that's the world we're in."

- They were, the Board of Supervisors of Maricopa County included four Republicans and one Democrat.

- That's right.

- Were they unanimous in their views and their counsel to you?

- Unanimous.

These are guys, four guys who have been part of the Republican Party for a long time, some of whom campaigned for Trump, many of whom considered themselves part of the grassroots, and I think that they wanted to do something, but I think it crossed the boundaries that they had set, the lines that they had set.

And so, none of them were interested in stopping the count.

- Let me ask you about somebody who is also named in the indictment, Speaker Rusty Bowers.

It details an extensive pressure campaign- - Yes.

- Against Speaker Bowers.

He refused to go along with the pressure campaign from the president, from Rudy Giuliani, and from several of the people who are also indicted.

I spoke to Rusty yesterday- - Rusty, yeah- - [Margaret] I spoke to Speaker Bowers yesterday.

Here's what he said.

- I'm not the prosecutor, I'm not the advocate.

I'm a witness, and when they put my hand on the Bible, or whatever they do, I'm gonna tell the truth.

- The Arizona GOP has called Speaker Bowers unfit to serve.

How do you think about Speaker Bowers, and how he handled the pressure campaign, and that moment in Arizona history?

- I think he's an American hero.

I think he's been a beacon of moral courage.

And so, I think that we need to have an introspective motive when we're throwing people like Rusty Bowers out of the party, out of polite society within the Republican Party.

We need to be doing, we need to be asking what changed that a man who we held in high regard, what happened that we were willing to call this man unfit to serve overnight?

And so, I think that Rusty- - Do you see the Arizona Republican Party doing that kind of introspection?

- No, not yet.

- The Arizona Attorney General is a Democrat.

- Correct.

- And several of the defendants have already accused her of weaponizing the justice system against Republicans.

- Okay.

- The Arizona Republican Party has dismissed the charges as blatant abuse of power.

As a Republican yourself, how do you see politics at play here?

- I think that a grand jury gave this a clean bill, which means it had probable cause, and if you read the indictment, it's very thorough, and I think it's disrespectful to the legal process to so offhandedly dismiss it.

- Given that this all stemmed from President Trump's insistence that he actually won Arizona- - Yeah.

- Does it bother you that he isn't charged?

- I haven't given that much thought yet.

But ultimately, yeah, I ultimately, I think leaders need to be held accountable.

I don't think that that's that outlandish a principle, and quite frankly is something that the Republican Party revered until recently is personal accountability and legal accountability.

- How close did we actually get to a situation where the results of the 2020 election in Arizona were overturned?

- I think quite close.

I think but for the courage of a few people like Rusty Bowers, like the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, and a few others out there, I think we put ourselves in a pretty perilous situation, and I'm proud of those people, but it also means that we need to do things, so that if this ever comes around again, hopefully there will be more people equipped with information that will say, "No, that's not how this worked, "that's an implausible theory, "and you shouldn't go down that route."

- Stephen Richer, thank you for joining me again to discuss the breaking news in Arizona.

You and I had an extended conversation on Wednesday in the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center about the election lies from 2020, what happened to you in 2022, the death threats that you've endured, and how you're preparing for 2024, and a sound and secure election in the county where 60% of Arizonans vote.

Here's a look at that conversation now.

Stephen Richer, welcome to "Firing Line."

- Thank you so much.

- When you ran for recorder in 2020- - I envisioned all of this.

- What did you expect?

What did you think the job would be?

- I got a sense of it being a heightened profile, but no, I never would've thought that we would've become sort of the center of the political conversation in Arizona, and then in some ways the center of the conversation about whither American democracy, and even we get international people coming in, and being like, "Is American democracy gonna be okay?"

And where do they come?

They come to Maricopa County.

- Why did Maricopa County become such a tipping point in this question of whither democracy?

- Yeah, I think it's for a whole bunch of reasons.

We're a county that has been a reliably red county, and so, we're changing, we're in a state of flux, lots of people moving into Arizona.

And then I think you can't discount the importance of the Cyber Ninjas review in 2021 that was here, and really made us the mecca of people who are election deniers, or Stop the Stealers, or whatever you call them.

This was the place to visit.

- Donald Trump and his associates cast significant doubt on the count of the vote in Maricopa County.

- Correct.

- And that led to this Republican state legislature bringing in an external audit- - Yeah.

- By a company that had never conducted audits before called Cyber Ninjas to recount the votes.

- Correct.

And then they embarked on what was supposed to be just a few week project that turned into six months, it raised millions and millions of dollars, and it drew international attention for anyone who wanted to continue to subscribe to the theory that the elections were stolen.

- When the Cyber Ninjas were finished with their audit- - Yeah.

- They actually found that Biden had more votes- - Yeah.

- Than your county had initially counted.

- So I think they completely falsified that.

I think that was a way to try to buy them some credibility, such that then they could make all of these allegations about cybersecurity, and that this could've been done, or inflated voter rolls.

And so, I really wouldn't put any stock in that.

If I had to guess, I would say that they just made up those numbers.

It was just, it was such a silly endeavor, and it was, I think it's a stain forever on Arizona's reputation, not even that you would be indulging these fantasies, but that you just chose such grossly incompetent people to do it.

- I should mention that you and I have known each other for some time in the context of Republican Party politics.

- Correct.

- We met when we were both young, idealistic conservatives.

The position of Recorder of Maricopa County is actually a partisan position.

- Partisan- - You are a Republican, and you ran for the office as a Republican.

- Correct.

- When did you realize the job was gonna be more than you signed up for?

- When it really dawned on me was the night of election night 2020, so November 3rd, 2020.

Polls have closed.

This facility is tabulating results.

- The world is watching the example of Arizona.

The president is watching the example.

You're not gonna let 'em steal this!

- Alex Jones is out in the parking lot with a whole bunch of people, flags, guns, the whole nine yards, and some of these people are people that were my allies, people who undoubtedly voted for me, and they're saying, "Stop the count, stop the count."

It was such a display of demagoguery that, the type of demagoguery that I always associated with the left, sort of the, "Grab your pitchfork, grab your torch, "and we're gonna go burn down the institution," that it was really disheartening such that I went on Twitter and said something like, "Guys, this isn't helping.

"Please stop," and that was the beginning of now a 3 1/2-year running rift between me and that element of the movement.

- You've talked about the death threats that you've received, the people who work with you received.

- Yeah.

- You've even talked about narrowly escaping some very uncomfortable encounters that could have become much more dangerous, and you've said that this stems from politicians, among them Kari Lake, who was the Arizona Republican candidate, gubernatorial candidate in 2022, who had an unsuccessful bid to become governor of the state, and who is now very likely to be the Republican nominee for the Senate position that is open in the fall.

Last year, you sued her for defamation.

What had she said about you that was worthy of a defamation lawsuit?

- Yeah, she said a lot of things.

A lot of them were not worthy of a defamation lawsuit, so insulting my abilities, insulting my intelligence, insulting my hair.

People like to insult my hair.

I'm losing it.

I know that.

But, you know, so that's all First Amendment protected, obviously.

But she was making very specific allegations alleging that I had done very serious crimes to throw the election to her opponent, Katie Hobbs.

She was told in no unspecific terms from the Superior Court, from the Court of Appeals, from the Arizona Supreme Court, that these allegations had no foundation, and yet, she kept making them, and making them, and making them.

This was her meal ticket.

This was what she was fundraising off of.

And so, you know, how many punches do you take before you punch back?

- You've effectively already won the case- - Yes.

- Because she now says that she won't defend herself from the claim.

Although she does admit no wrongdoing, she's essentially chosen not to fight in court.

- It is a bit rich for somebody who's been banging on for the past two years that she has easy evidence of widespread corruption, widespread fraud, for somebody who said she stands by every single claim, and then she's served up on a silver platter an opportunity to prove it in front of a court of law, and she says, "I'll take a pass on that."

I think that's pretty telling.

- What do you think the impact of that lawsuit will be on the 2024 election?

- Well, it won't just be in my lawsuit.

I think it'll be the Dominion lawsuit against Fox that Fox settled for 787 million.

I think it'll be Ruby and Shaye Moss' lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani.

It'll hopefully have a cavening effect on just like how zany an idea are you willing to broadcast on your network.

Now, there's one specific actor who seems undeterred.

It doesn't seem like you can throw any number at him to get him to stop, and I think for that it will just have to be the political winds will have to change.

- You mean Donald Trump, the former president, who's the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party?

- Correct.

- According to federal prosecutors, nearly half of federal election-related threats nationwide involve targeting Arizonan officials.

- Yeah.

- Like yourself.

- Yeah, I think I'm leading the league.

- This does include threats against you and your office.

- Yes.

- Often from people who are out of state.

How has this impacted your ability to do your job?

- It's added to it.

All of this has just added to our plate.

- How did Arizona become the target of so much violent hostility across the country?

- There were some very loud, very prominent people who built their entire political reputations on this falsehood, people who had either no business in politics, or no experience in politics.

So Kari Lake took something like the Cyber Ninjas audit, and took it into stardom.

And so, you had no statewide loud voices pushing back, and then you had a few people for whom it was everything, and then an economy built up around it, and there are some people who their livelihoods would be destroyed, or their political possibilities would be destroyed if we broadly acknowledged it as false now.

- Without that Republican leadership pushing back on the election lies perpetrated by the likes of Kari Lake and Donald Trump, both of them will be on the ballot in November- - Right.

- Here in Arizona.

What are the prospects of violence if they were to both lose?

- I hope, I think all it takes is one, or two people, right?

But again, I think it goes to leadership.

If you have leaders who are saying things that might not qualify as incitement in terms of under the law, like incitement to violence, but again, if you say that something is being done horrific, the country is being stolen from you as you know it, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to think that somebody's going to do something pretty outlandish as a result of hearing that.

- If something were to happen to you, or someone who works in this office- - Yeah.

- Would you hold Donald Trump and Kari Lake accountable?

- I would, yes, especially if something happened to somebody in this office.

So we're gonna do everything in our power to make sure that our team members are safe and are comfortable.

So if you come around here during election time, you'll see all these floodlights, you'll see the sheriff's office out, you'll see armed security guards in this facility, and whatnot.

And so, in '22, we didn't have a problem recruiting people.

I mean, we had to make some efforts, but people came, and I hope that that will be true for the '24 cycle as well.

- You yourself are in a crowded primary right now, because you're up for reelection.

- Yup.

- The Republican primary has some other Trump adjacent candidates, including your sort of main opponent, Justin Heap.

How do you measure your prospects of winning reelection- - Yeah.

- In a closed partisan Republican primary, where you are so squarely on the wrong side of the Republican Party apparatus now, as you've described?

- Well, because we're in this building, I'm going to sort of leave some of the political stuff aside, but I'll just say that I'm going to continue telling the truth about our elections.

I'm gonna continue telling the truth about the people who work here.

I hope that's not bad politics, I pray that's not bad politics, and quite frankly, to sort of step back from my personal political fortunes, it hasn't been a great thing for the Arizona Republican Party.

In 2016, my party, the Arizona Republican Party, had two US senators, had a governor, had an attorney general, had a secretary of state.

We now have zero US Senators.

We don't have a governor, we don't have an attorney general, we don't have a secretary of state.

We've gotten our butts kicked.

And so, I don't know why anyone would wanna keep going down this road.

- You're saying it's not a winning formula?

- It's not, but it seems some people think it's dispositive in terms of a Republican primary, but what they know it is absolutely necessary for is for the blessing of Donald Trump.

For the blessing of Donald Trump, the most important thing is saying that Donald Trump won the 2020 election.

- What's the worst case scenario if somebody who is an election denier replaces you as the Recorder of Maricopa County?

- Yeah, I think there's lots of things that you could do in terms to tinker with the system.

I think the first thing, though, that you'd see is you'd lose the professional staff.

The people who have been working in elections and voter registration, some of 'em for 30-plus years, wouldn't wanna be led by a person who has called them criminals, wouldn't wanna be led by a person who has indulged the wildest conspiracy theories, wouldn't wanna be led by a person who might ask them to do unlawful things.

Now, the beauty of elections in America and the beauty of laws in Arizona is that ultimately these things reveal themselves.

Ultimately, it's actually quite, quite hard to manipulate a voting system.

So what I think you would see more than any sort of stolen election would be a, just a system that's not running well.

- You're seeking reelection despite these kind of threats- - Yeah.

- And this harassment.

A lot of election officials actually are just stepping away- - Yeah.

- And taking the moment to retire.

- Yeah.

- According to one report, more than half of Arizona's chief election officials have stepped down, or been replaced since November of 2020.

Explain what impact that has on the administration of an office like this.

- It's challenging, and it's just an indictment of where we're at as a society that all of these people feel like this is no longer something worth pursuing, which I think many of them got into because, gosh, what gets more American pie than administering elections, and interacting with your community in that manner?

- Another issue that has come to the forefront here in your state, and that is the return of a territorial law about abortion, a complete ban on abortions, except for when the life of the mother is threatened.

- That's right.

- How do you expect that this issue will factor into voters' prioritization of the issues that will drive them to the polls and vote?

- I think most political pundits think that this will push it into a top three issue, and it will be on the ballot, and I think especially if the 1864 law remains in place, there will be a lot of momentum for getting people to the polls for voting on this initiative.

It might drive out some new voters.

- So you think at a very minimum it'll drive better turnout.

- I do.

- The other issue that is so salient is the border.

What should President Biden be doing that he isn't?

- You gotta go down there- - You're a border state- - You gotta go down there.

Like honestly, like, you know, just to show respect to the men and women who are working for your administration.

It would be like- - He's been to the border.

- I know, once recently.

It was in Texas, though, I believe.

- It was, yeah.

So he should come to the Arizona border?

- It would be the same thing if my frontline workers, and I don't wanna compare my office of 160 people to the federal government, but like when your men and women are getting punched in the nose, like you should go down there, and you should be the general who's with them, who's supporting them.

So I don't really get it.

It seems like it's been ignored, and like we hope it'll just go away.

That doesn't seem to be working so far, and Arizonans are not happy.

- In 1966, Arizona Republican Barry Goldwater, who had been the nominee for president in 1964 appeared on the original "Firing Line "with William F. Buckley, Jr." Take a look at what he said then.

- I might say, Bill, this is my chief worry as a conservative, that we have put so much power in the office of the presidency that someday the wrong man could come along, and I wouldn't be so concerned about whether he could use these powers to perpetuate himself in office, but how he would use these powers to destroy people that disagreed with him.

- As we look ahead at the prospect of a second Trump term, which is a possibility, a real possibility- - Oh, definitely- - A very serious possibility, do you share Goldwater's concern there about the concentration of power in the executive branch, and how a president could use their power to destroy their enemies?

- Yes, absolutely, but that predates this.

I think that's a natural conservative instinct.

- You have really gone out of your way to be transparent with the press and the public about how this building works, how you process ballots- - Right.

- How it works here.

You've given election tours to various civic groups.

What are you trying to show the residents of Maricopa County?

- Yeah, I'm clinging on to the Enlightenment belief that more knowledge and more information can drive out bad information and false theories.

- You think you can beat disinformation?

- I hope so.

- Through transparency?

- I hope so.

- Stephen Richer, thank you for inviting us here into the Maricopa County Recorder's Office, and thank you for sharing your thoughts and your experience here on "Firing Line."

- Thank you very much.

- [Announcer] "Firing Line with Margaret Hoover" is made possible in part by Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, The Fairweather Foundation, The Tepper Foundation, Peter and Mary Kalikow, The Asness Family Foundation, The Beth and Ravenel Curry Foundation, The McKenna Family Foundation, Charles R. Schwab, The Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fund for Strategic Innovation, and by the following.

[upbeat music] Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc. and by Pfizer Inc. [upbeat music] [upbeat music continues] [bright music] [gentle music] - [Narrator] You're watching PBS.

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