Federal law enforcement have reportedly opened an investigation into former Maricopa County recorder Stephen Richer for allegedly obstructing Arizona lawmakers’ effort to investigate the 2022 election.
Republican State Rep. John Gillette announced the Richer investigation during a committee meeting on election misconduct earlier this month. Per Gillette, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the departments of Homeland Security and Justice will be investigating a criminal referral alleging election law violations in Arizona.
The alleged misconduct was said to have occurred while Richer was still county recorder in 2023. Richer acted in his capacity as president of the Arizona Association of County Recorders to advise all county recorders in the state to refuse Republican lawmakers’ request seeking records pertaining to the 2022 election.
Gillette accused Richer of purposefully withholding critical information from lawmakers.
“Stephen Richer telling recorders not to comply with the legislative public records request: that is not a glitch,” said Gillette. “That’s on purpose.”
According to Gillette, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has their eyes on Richer and a subpoena was issued. Gillette shared that he spoke with former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem shortly before her departure from the agency; Noem was shifted into a newly created role within the Trump administration — special envoy for “Shield of the Americas” — amid ongoing controversy over the agency’s actions involving mass deportations and expensive ad campaigns.
“There appears to be some obstruction or intent to obstruct other recorders from doing their job because they have an association, he was president of the association at the time, but he was instructing other elected officials that are not of Maricopa County how to comply or not comply in this case with a lawful public records request from the House,” said Gillette.
After voters declined to reelect Richer in the 2024 primary election, Richer morphed his political involvement into punditry within the think tank and higher education spheres, styled as a moderate Republican critical of the current hot-button GOP trends in policy — especially concerning elections. Richer departed the state for Massachusetts as part of that shift, with occasional stints in Arizona. He announced late last year that he plans to move back to the Valley permanently at some point in the near future.
Richer is involved as a senior American Democracy fellow for the Harvard Kennedy School and a legal fellow for the Cato Institute. The Arizona Republic and Arizona State University are among those entities who frequently invite him to speak his mind on policy.
Richer’s latest take on President Donald Trump’s election integrity bill, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, argued that proof of citizenship for voter registration bore little significance on improving election integrity.
“When I was the Maricopa County recorder, I would often tell people that, on a partisan basis, the limited instances of voter fraud probably balance each other out to net zero. Nobody liked hearing that,” wrote Richer. “[T]here is no evidence to suggest that the SAVE America Act is a silver bullet for Republican electoral success. I suspect that issues such as gas prices, the war in Iran, security lines at airports, and the cost of goods and services will all be much more significant in determining who wins control of Congress in November 2026.”
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