'No means no': AZ official calls for resistance to new Trump scheme

As President Trump suggests the federal government should “nationalize” and take over the elections process from the states, we speak with Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes. He is the former county recorder for Maricopa County, Arizona, and oversaw elections there in 2020. The Justice Department has sued Arizona and over 20 other states for their full voter registration lists. “No means no,” Fontes says in response to the Trump administration’s encroachment on state authority. “We should not be handing over any of our personal identifying information to the president. Not only should we not be doing it, but it’s against the law for me to fulfill the request from the Department of Justice.”

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: President Trump doubled down on his calls to “nationalize” elections in the United States, as he continues to falsely claim he won the 2020 election over President Biden. On Monday, Trump appeared on a podcast hosted by Dan Bongino, who recently resigned as FBI deputy director.

AMY GOODMAN: Under the Constitution, U.S. elections are governed by states and administered by county and municipal officials in thousands of precincts. Trump was asked about his call to nationalize elections Tuesday.

AMY GOODMAN: Trump’s remarks come days after the FBI raided an election facility in Fulton County, Georgia, and seized truckloads of ballots and documents, something like 700 boxes, from the 2020 election. U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was present at the raid and later used her cellphone to let President Trump speak to the FBI agents, a move that has alarmed former Justice Department officials.

This all comes as Republicans continue to face major electoral losses. On Tuesday, Democrat Taylor Rehmet won a Texas state Senate seat, receiving 57% of the vote in a district that Trump had won by 17 percentage points in 2024. Trump has publicly expressed fear he’ll be impeached again if Democrats win back control of the House in November.

To look more at President Trump’s attacks on the nation’s voting system, we go to Phoenix, Arizona, where we’re joined by Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s secretary of state. He is the former county recorder for Maricopa County, Arizona. He oversaw the elections there in 2020. The Justice Department has sued Arizona and over 20 other states for their full voter registration lists.

Secretary Adrian Fontes, thanks so much for joining us. If you can start off by just responding to President Trump saying he wants to federalize, to nationalize the elections, and what exactly that means?

ADRIAN FONTES: Well, what it means is that you, as an American, if you are comfortable right now in the face of this rhetoric, then you are with the regime. It’s really that simple. This is the moment where the American public should be exercising its power under the First Amendment to stand and be counted. What we have right now is sort of a “welcome to the Third World” doormat, and we’re walking right over it as if nothing is going on. And so, very clearly, my call is not what my reaction is. It ought to be what your reaction is as an American. Again, if you’re comfortable, you’re with the White House.

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about what it means that Arizona has refused to hand over the voter rolls. It’s very interesting. I was just watching Minnesota Governor Walz, who, you know, was responding to Pam Bondi saying maybe they would pull out, you know, end the surge, if Minnesota would give over the voter rolls. I want to go right now to Governor Walz.

AMY GOODMAN: So, he believes that, ultimately, this isn’t even about immigration, what’s happening in Minnesota and the killing of two U.S. citizens there by immigration agents, that this is about getting control of the voter rolls. I mean, Pam Bondi specifically said she wants those voter rolls. A number of states — what, about a dozen? — have said they’ll hand them over. But Arizona, your state, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, says no. What does that mean?

ADRIAN FONTES: Well, no means no. And what’s happening in Wisconsin with that extortion letter — “We’ll take our gang off the streets if you hand us, you know, this thing that we value” — speaks again to what I said earlier. Look, if they were comfortable with their policies and they were excited about facing the public, they would love to have an election. They would love to have the states just running things the way they did. And the clip earlier, where Donald Trump said, “Oh, 2020 was corrupt, but 2024 was OK,” you know, it just speaks to the notion that he understands very, very clearly that there are consequences to leadership when facing the power of the American people. And that power regularly gets exercised through the normal process of elections.

Elections are the predictable, normal — I’ve likened them to a golden thread that runs through the fabric of our society. It binds everything together. And what he’s trying to do is pull that golden thread out and disintegrate the entire fabric of our society and throw us into chaos, unpredictability. And that’s bad for business. It’s bad for science. It’s bad for the arts. It’s bad for innovation. It’s bad for, you know, entrepreneurs. It’s bad for everyone.

This is a moment right now when, like here in Arizona, we should not be handing over any of our personal identifying information to the president. Not only should we not be doing it, but it’s against the law for me to fulfill the request from the Department of Justice. But let me make one thing very, very clear here, as well: The Department of Justice has never asked the state of Arizona, through my office or any other means that I’m aware of, for the regularly available voter list, that is available through a public records request. What they’ve asked for is all of the personal identifying information that we are charged by law to keep confidential, under penalty of felony conviction. OK? We’re talking about mothers’ last names, date and month of birth, part or whole of your Social Security number, tribal ID numbers. These are the things that we are charged to keep confidential, and the Department of Justice is asking for it. And I’m just saying no. So, to your question: What does no mean? No means no.

AMY GOODMAN: You oversaw the 2020 election in Maricopa County, another extremely important county, you know, another very, very important county in voting, in national elections, also targeted by a conspiracy and misinformation campaign to say that the national election was fraudulent. What’s your reaction to this latest step by the Trump administration to seize ballots in Georgia? And six years later, how has that turmoil from 2020 impacted voters and politics in Arizona?

ADRIAN FONTES: Well, let’s just be clear: The turmoil in 2020 was not turmoil as it pertains to the administration of the election. The 2020 election was run by regular U.S. citizens like you, me and the viewers of this program. It’s just folks who show up and do this work every couple years, whenever they’re called upon, because Americans value good, solid, clean, fair and accessible elections, so we just do that work. The turmoil is caused by those folks who are out in the parking lot of our offices, at our warehouse with their long rifles, including the Q Shaman and Alex Jones and those types. That’s where the turmoil came from, the folks who wanted to disrupt the election system.

And let me be really clear about something: I was on that ballot in 2020 with Donald Trump, and I lost my reelection bid, just like Donald Trump did, in a clean election, a free and fair election. Now, since I’ve become secretary of state after that, we’ve made sure to maintain the same kind of integrity, the same processes, for the most part, just improving some access for voters across the state.

What really bothers me here is that so many Americans are just depending on somebody else to make sure that things go well. They’re depending on somebody else to do the job. We, as Americans, individually, every single one of us, have not just the right, but the duty, to stand up when things like this happen. And so, when we don’t have outrage, when we don’t actually move that outrage into action, we’re essentially complicit with what is happening. And so, I’m doing everything that I can in my office to not only maintain the integrity and the lawful course of the actions of the secretary of state, but I’m also calling on American citizens to be lawful and peaceful and assert our rights and our power. Remember, if they weren’t afraid of our power, they wouldn’t be trying to squelch it and keep us from using it.

AMY GOODMAN: Secretary Fontes, I wanted to read from the Arizona Mirror in 2020. “Trump himself has repeatedly fanned the flames, alleging without evidence that Dominion machines deleted 2.7 million votes for him and tweeting … 'Now it is learned that the horrendous Dominion Voting System was used in Arizona (and big in Nevada). No wonder the result was a very close loss!'” And again, you were formerly the recorder for Maricopa County through 2021.

And I wanted to go to this other issue. These two are connected. Atlantic magazine recently published an article headlined ”MAGA Thinks Maduro Will Prove Trump Won in 2020.” The article quotes MyPillow founder Mike Lindell saying, quote, “I’m hoping now that Maduro will actually come clean and tell us everything about the machines and how they steal the elections,” unquote. Some have speculated Trump could pardon Maduro in exchange for him stating Venezuela interfered in the 2020 election, even though no evidence of that exists. Again, that, I was reading from The Atlantic.

Since you were really at the heart of it then — and Fox had to pay something like over $750 million, three-quarters of a billion dollars, for libeling Dominion Systems. But can you comment on all of this and the presence of — this is such a complicated issue, but the presence of Tulsi Gabbard, saying she was there in Georgia because she’s interested in foreign interference in the election, sort of stringing this whole thing together?

ADRIAN FONTES: You know, I’m reminded of some of those scenes we see in sitcoms sometimes, where there’s a big board with a red thread that just kind of goes from here to there in conspiracy theories. But this time, there’s a little ketchup splattered on the wall, as well.

The bottom line is this: The elections in America have been free and fair since their inception. There have been minor issues here and there that get worked out through the courts. But it is in the courts, by the way, where that settlement that you mentioned happened. It is under oath and through the regular process of law and procedure that we end up with the just results. And in that case, the just results were someone was held accountable for the lies.

In the world of politics, the courts will give great deference, because they want politicians to be able to share ideas. And so, the lies that are being spread about our elections get to go a little bit further, except when they get into the courts and when you have actual accountability. Remember, after the 2020 election, there were like 60 or 61 cases, and not a single one showed any actual evidence of wrongdoing on the part of elections officials. And being in Maricopa County, boy, let me tell you — and Maricopa, by the way, at the time and still is the second-largest voting jurisdiction in the United States of America. We’re talking about two-and-a-half million voters in the metro Phoenix area — no small potatoes. And it was a tough task. But I had a great team in 2020, and we did an amazing job.

So, kudos to the folks on the ground, kudos to the folks in the polling places, kudos to everyone who knows that they can stand on their integrity, they can stand on actual history, and we can put all of the conspiracy theories aside, except that the greatest threat to American elections and our republic is the idea that Donald Trump is still lying about the 2020 election. Everything else is just a symptom of that illness, and we need to figure out a way to get past that. We, the American public, have to stand up to this president. We have to stand up to our own president, as was charged by our founders, to make sure that, in our discomfort, we exercise our power and we move forward as a nation, so that we can get past this, and we can go back to being the folks who can innovate, who can create, who can just hang out and love one another once in a while, without every single day having to worry about the grievance of the resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

AMY GOODMAN: Adrian Fontes, I want to thank you for being with us, secretary of state for Arizona, elected in 2022. Previously, he was the Maricopa County recorder, who oversaw the 2020 elections.

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