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. >> on wednesday, an arizona grand jury indicted rudy giuliani and other members of tr trump's inner circle. stephen richer is a top election official in the state. himself a republican who took office in january of 2021 as election lies hit overdrive. as recorder of maricopa county, one of the cotry's largest voting jurisdictions, richer refused to say trump had won. >> i doubt anyone in the country has looked at the 2020 election in arizona more than i have, and it checks out 100%. >> his defense of the integrity of arizona's elections led to death threats, a censure from the gop, and a lawsuit from kari lake. and the arizona gop dismisses the new indictment as a blatant

abuse of power, what does maricopa county reporter stephen richer say now? >> "firing line with margaret hoover" is made in possible in part by robert grenari, vanessa and henry cornell, the tenner foundation, peter and mary calico, the azdaz family foundation, the ma kenna family foundation, the eric and wenny schmitt fund for strategic innovation, and by the following -- corporate funding is provided by stevens, inc, and by pfizer, inc. >> 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 electorsn 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 see thing degree of accountability? >> 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 their own culpability, but i do have some measure, sympathy for somebody who just gets his or her cues from people that they trust or read stories, but where i have no patience is for the leaders who lead them down this road, and then abandon them quite frankly. >> so that end, unlike in

georgia, this indictment does not name donald trump. is he the master mind in your view of al of this? >> this has all built out from donald trump's unwillingness to accept thinks defeat, despite having ample knowledge to the contrary that it was a free and fair election. ultimately, yes. and there were agents who were facilitators. >> the indictment alleges that these 11 individuals had schemed to create a false set of electors, whose votes in the electoral college could then be counted for trump/pence instead of biden/harris, throwing the election to donald trump. >> we were all getting text messages and 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. >> so the board of supervisors reached out to you, the incoming recorder of maricopa county, who is also a republican. >> yes. and the board was asked to take express action, such as stop the

count. >> which it 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 going to start getting these calls, and we would 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. >> the board of supervisors of maricopa county wincluded four must bes and one democrat. were they unanimous in their views? >> unanimous. these are four guys who hav 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. 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. 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 against speaker bowers. he refused to go along with the pressure campaign from the president, rudy giuliani, and se several of the people indicted. i spoke to him yesterday. here's what he said. >> i'm not the prosecutor, i'm not the advocate, i'm a witness. and when i put my hand on the bible or whatever they do, i'm going to tell the truth. >> the 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. so i think that we need to have an introspective moment 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, and several have accused her of weaponizing the

justice system. 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. if you read the indictment, it's very thorough. i think it's disrespectful to the legal process to so off handedly dismiss it. >> given that this all stemmed from president trump's insistence that he won arizona, does it bother you that he isn't charged? >> umm, i haven't given that much thought yet. but ultimately, i ultimately think leaders need to be held accountable. i don't think 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 perilous situation. i'm proud of those people, but it also means 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 works. that's an implausible theory and you should not go down that route. >> thank you again for joining me. we had an extended conversation on wednesday 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, in 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 i never would have thought we could have become the center ofhe political conversation in arizona, and then in some ways, the center of the conversation about american democracy, and international people coming in, is american demock rcracy going be okay? >> why did maricopa county become such a tipping point in this question of withered democracy? >> i think it's a bunch of reasons. we're a county that's been a reliably red county. lots of people are moving into arizona, and you can't discount the impornce of the cyberninja's 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 by a company that had never conducted an audit before called cyber ninjas t recount the vote. >> correct. and they embarrassed on a project that turned into six months, it raised millions of dollars and it drew international attention for anyone who wanted to continue to subscribe to the theory that the elections werestolen. >> when the cyber ninjas were finished with their audit, they 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 get them some credibility so

they could make all these allegations about cybersecurity, and this could have been done or inflated voter rolls. so i wouldn't put in any stock in that. i would guess they made up with those numbers. it was a silly endeavor and a stain on arizona's reputation. that you just chose such grossly inkoc incomp temperkcompetent people . met when we were both young, r idealistic conservatives. e position of recorder of maricopa county is a part of a position. you are a republican, and you ran for the office as a republican. >> correct. >> when did you realize the job was going to 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 was tabulating

results. >> the world is watching the example of arizona. the president is watching the example. you're not going to let us feel 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 eyes, people who undoubtedly voted for me, saying stop the count, stop the count. it was such a display of demagoguery that i always associated with the left, sort of the grab your pitchfork, grab your torch, and we're going to burn down the institution. it was disheartening to the fact that i went on twitter and said th 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. >> yep. >> you've each talked about

narrowly escapg some uncomfortable encounters that could have been much more dangerous. and you've said that this stems from politicians, among them kari lake, who was the arizona republican 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 jintelligence, insulting my hair, that's all first amendment protected, obviously. she was making 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, 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 is what she was fund-raising off of. and so, you know, how many punches do you take before you punch back? >> you have effectively already won the case. >> yeah. >> 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 has been banging on for the past two years, that she has easy evidence of widespread corruption and fraud, for somebody who says she stands by every single claim, and she's served up on a silver platter an opportunity to prove it in a court of law and 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 be just my lawsuit. i think it will be the dominion lawsuit against fox that fox settled for $788 million, it will the lawsuit against rudy giuliani. it will hopefully have an effect on just how zany an idea are you willing to broad cast 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 a political -- the political winds will have to change. >> you mean donald trump, the former president, the presumptive nominee of the republican party? >> correct. >> according to federal prosecutors, nearly half of federal election related threats nationwide involve targeting arizonaen officials. >> yeah. >> like yourself. >> i think i'm leading the league.

>> this does include threats against you and your office. >> yeah. >> 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 hose tilt across the country? >> there was 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 ninja's audit and took it into stardom. 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 live lihoods could be destroyed or political possibilities would be destroyed if we broadly acknowledged it as false. >> without that republican

leadership pushing back on the election lie perpetrated by the likes of kari like and donald trump, both of them will be on the ballot in november here in arizona. what are the prospects of violence if they were to both lose? >> i hope -- all it takes is one or two people, right? >> uh-huh. >> 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 sebody is 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 going to do everything in ourower to make sure that our team members are safe and comfortable. so if you come here during election time, you'll see the flood lights, armed security guards, the sheriff's office. so in '22, we didn't have a problem recruiting people. we had to make some efforts, but people came. i hope that will be true for the '24 cycle, as well. >> you, yourself, are in a crowded primary right now, because you're up for re-election. >> yep. >> the republican primary had some other trump adjacent candidates, including your main opponent, justin heath. how do you measure your prospects of winning re-election 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 those -- 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 going to 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 u.s. senators, had a governor, an attorney general, a secretary of state. we now have zero u.s. senators, we don't have a governor, we don't have an attorney general or a secretary of state. we've gotten our butts kicked, and so i don't know why anyone would want to keep going down this road. >> you're saying it's not a winning formula. >> it's not, but some people

think it's dispositiven terms of a republican primary. but what they know is it's absolutely necessary for the blessing of donald trump. 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? >> i think there's lots of things that you could do in terms to tinker with the system. you would lose the professional staff is the first thing. the people who have been working in elections and voter registration, some of whom for 30 plus years, wouldn't want to be led by a person who has called them criminals, wouldn't want to be led by a person who has indullened the wildest conspiracy theorys or by a person who might ask them to do unlawful things. 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 re-election, despite these kind of threats and this harassment. a lot of election officials actually are just stepping away and taking the moment to retire. >> yeah. >> according to one report, me than half of arizona's chief election officials have stepped down 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 pursui pursuing, which many of them got into which is what is more american pie than administering elections and interacting with your community in that matter.

>> another issue that's come to the forefront in your state is the return of a territorial law about abortion, a complete ban on abortion except when the life of the mother is threatened. >> that's right. >> how do you expect that this issue will factor into voter's prioritization of the issues that will drive them to the polls and vote? >> i think most political pundits think this will push it into a top three issue. and it will be on the ballot. 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. >> very minimum, it will drive voter turnout? >> i do. >> the other thing so sail yenlt is the border. what should joe biden be doing that he isn't? >> you've got to go down there. honestly, just to show respect to the men and women who are

working for your admini administration -- >> he should come to the arizona boarder? >> it would be the same thing if my frontline workers, and i don't want to compare my office of 160 people to those of the federal government, but when your men and women are getting punched in the nose, you should go down there and be the general who is with them, who is supporting them. so i don't really get it. it seems like it's been ignored, and we hope it will just go away. that doesn't seem to be working so far. en 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, j 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 some day, the wrong man could come along, and i wouldn't be so concerned 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 term, which is a possibility, a serious possibility, do you share his 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 gone out of your way to be transparent how this building works, how you process ballots, 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 onto the enlightenment belief that more knowledge and more information can drive out bad information, and false theorys. >> you think you can beat disinformation? >> 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. >> "firing line with margaret hoover" is made possible in part by robert graneri, the fair weather foundation, peter and mary calico, the azdez family foundation, the mckenna fam my foundation, charles r. schwab, and by the following -- corporate funding is provided by stevens inc, and by pfizer inc.

♪ ♪

mister rogers' neighborhood is made possible in part by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. [ "won't you be my neighbor?" playing ] ♪