On Friday night, a Twitter account associated with Lake’s campaign posted a video of a portion of the call that captures Liddy cursing and raising his voice. The Lake campaign did not respond to a request for the full video, which was taken from inside the GOP’s war room at a Scottsdale resort. County officials said they were blindsided that the conversation had been recorded and then posted publicly with the names of only one side bleeped out.
Tim La Sota, an attorney for the Lake campaign who was present for the call, did not dispute Liddy’s characterization of the conversation but said he did not interpret Mehr’s comments as a threat. An RNC spokesman called Liddy’s account of the call “false” and issued a statement attacking Maricopa County officials as “completely inept.”
The tense exchange, between two Republican lawyers, lays bare the internal GOP war over the administration of elections. Nowhere is that feud more ferocious than in Maricopa County, the second-largest voting jurisdiction in the country, which became a focal point of former president Donald Trump’s efforts to reverse his 2020 loss. Vote-counting is still proceeding in the county, and the race for state attorney general, which could shape enforcement of election law, hangs in the balance.