Arizona U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake confirmed on Thursday that she recorded the audio of former Arizona Republican Party (AZGOP) Chair Jeff DeWit relaying an offer for Lake to receive a well-paying private sector job in exchange for staying out of politics. She also said listening to the audio with her daughter was a key motivation to release the recording.
Lake, during an appearance on “Louder with Crowder” on Thursday, confirmed she recorded the audio of DeWit, who resigned from his position leading the AZGOP after the audio surfaced and gave conservative commentator and comedian Steven Crowder new details about its release.
“I was recording,” Lake said to Crowder before revealing DeWit called her on either February 28 or March 1 of 2023 with a last-minute request to meet. According to Lake, he told her he was already approaching her neighborhood when he requested to meet, and she expressed reluctance due to her travel schedule.
She told Crowder that DeWit insisted on meeting despite her warning that she had no interest in an attempt to persuade her against running for U.S. Senate and claimed DeWit was insistent that they meet to discuss a topic that could not be mentioned on a phone call.
“I thought, well, maybe there’s going to be a threat. I didn’t know what to expect, so I just clipped on a little microphone and invited him into my home,” Lake told Crowder.
“He sat at my dining room table and that’s what transpired,” Lake explained, referencing the recording.
.@KariLake Reveals Motive Behind Secret Recording… pic.twitter.com/QoS32N9pcH
— Steven Crowder (@scrowder) January 25, 2024
Lake also told Crowder that, while she has referenced the offer relayed by DeWit in her public speeches, she did not listen to the contents of the recording until this week.
“Something struck me this week, I just got the feels, and I went, ‘I want to listen to that again,'” Lake explained that she played it in the presence of her 20-year-old daughter, who she said questioned the ethics of DeWit.
Lake said, “I had that, my daughter’s guilt on me, and that’s one of the reasons that is out now.”
When she listened to the audio for the first time with her family, Lake said they agreed DeWit’s offer was “absolutely bribery.”
The Senate candidate also indicated to Crowder that this sort of offer might be commonplace in politics and recalled DeWit’s reference to Washington, D.C., as a “backscratching club” in the audio.
“In this audio recording you heard about the backscratching club,” Lake told Crowder. “I’m not going to join the backscratching club, I’m going to join the ass kicking club.”
DeWit, who told Lake that his offer was on behalf of “powerful” interests from “Back East,” asserted in his Wednesday resignation letter that his offer to Lake was motivated by friendship and claimed that Lake’s representatives threatened to release more recordings unless he resigned.
In response to his resignation letter, Lake called DeWit a “delusional person” and said his decision to quit his position at the AZGOP was “better late than never.”
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Georgia Star News, The Virginia Star, and the Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Kari Lake” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
This is considered a win in their circle. A good paying job or position for little or no work. Just another day at the office (wink wink).