Arizona U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake joined Wednesday’s edition of The Afternoon Addiction with Garret Lewis on KFYI in Phoenix where she reacted to Jeff DeWit’s resignation as the chair of the Arizona Republican Party (AZGOP) after he delivered her a message last year which included offering her money and a job if she stayed out of politics for two years.
The audio recording of DeWit allegedly trying to convince Lake to stay out of politics for two years by suggesting he could find her a well-paying nonpolitical job in the private sector was released on Tuesday, as previously reported by The Arizona Sun Times.
DeWit announced his resignation from the AZGOP the morning after the recording was released.
“I understand that Jeff Dewit has resigned, I guess better late than never,” Lake said on Wednesday. “It took him a long time to finally realize that that kind of behavior is not acceptable. The Republican party…will not tolerate bribery and that kind of behavior any longer.”
Responding to DeWit’s resignation letter, in which the former AZGOP chair said the leaked audio recordings were “taken out of context,” Lake called him a “delusional person.”
“I think this is a delusional person talking, sadly. In his resignation, there was no acknowledgement of wrongdoing that he screwed up, that he shouldn’t have done that, that it was wrong and unethical. And there was no apology to the Arizona Republicans. It’s good that he’s gone,” Lake said.
Lake went on to say she hopes the AZGOP will move forward by electing an “honorable person” as its next chair, as the next ten months leading up to the 2024 general election are “critical.”
“I hope the Arizona Republicans will elect a really honorable person because the next ten months are absolutely critical for our state and our country. And we can’t have somebody who is incompetent, immoral, and unethical in that position. So I’m glad [DeWit] resigned. I wish he would have done the more honorable thing and apologized and acknowledged that that was just shocking behavior,” Lake said.
Lake added that respected journalists covering the story have told her they “never heard of such blatant bribery” before.
“I’ve had people from all over the world reaching out to me saying that this is just shocking,” Lake said.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Kari Lake” by Gage Skidmore CC2.0.
