A top Republican official in Arizona threw in the towel on Wednesday, resigning from his position amid a public feud with Kari Lake, who he claims is “on a mission to destroy” him.
Jeff DeWit, chair of the state’s Republican Party, accused Lake of blackmailing him after she released a recording of a private phone conversation between the two in which he can be heard attempting to bribe the Senate candidate. Lake also allegedly threatened DeWit with a “more damaging” recording if he refused to step down.
“Since our conversation where I advised Lake to postpone her campaign and aim for the governor’s position in two years, she has been on a mission to destroy me,” DeWit said in a statement on Wednesday. “It was a suggestion made in good faith, believing it could benefit both her future prospects and the party’s overall strategy.”
“The release of our conversation by Lake confirms a disturbing tendency to exploit private interactions for personal gain and increases concerns about her habit of secretly recording personal and private conversations,” DeWit continued. “This is obviously a concern given how much interaction she has with high profile people including President Donald Trump.”
In the original, 10-minute audio clip published by The Daily Mail, DeWit—who served as chief operating officer on Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign—can be heard asking Lake to name her price to stay out of politics for the next two years, insisting that the GOP needed to make way for another candidate as Trump would not win the 2024 race, and that there were “very powerful people who want to keep you out.”
“I said things I regret,” DeWrite said, “but I realize when hearing Lake’s recording that I was set up. I believe she orchestrated this entire situation to have control over the state party, and it is obvious from the recording that she crafted her performance responses with the knowledge that she was recording it, intending to use this recording later to portray herself as a hero in her own story.”