Exclusive: Int’l Censors Trained AZ Officials On Targeting Speech

Maricopa County Recorder Steven Richer turned to the left-leaning States United Democracy Center and an overseas group bankrolled by the State Department to help his office target election speech that’s disapproved of by the government, according to emails obtained by The Federalist.

Richer thanked States United for offering to let his office “piggy back” on the group’s anti-speech operations, which he described as “deep scanning” the internet for “disinformation,” a term often invoked to censor speech the government disagrees with. States United is a left-wing election law group that consistently opposes Republican election integrity legislation like voter ID laws and supports Democrat attempts to diminish election security, according to InfluenceWatch. The group has praised the weaponization of the justice system against Trump, and was described by The New York Times as part of a “coalition” preparing to “push back” against a potential Trump victory with “extraordinary pre-emptive actions.”

According to email records, States United set up a call with Richer’s staff and the global censorship group, Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD). ISD is a London group that has been accused of wrongly labeling “mainstream views” as “misinformation” and subsequently censoring conservative opinions online, according to InfluenceWatch. The group was the recipient of a 2021 grant sponsored by the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which “fund[s] the development of censorship tools,” as The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland has reported. The ISD works with governments, leftist 501(c)(3) groups, and Big Tech companies as well as some of the left’s biggest financial backers.

Richer later suggested Arizona State University officials should fire Faculty Associate Aaron Ludwig for retweeting election concerns, apparently looping States United in on the process.

Briefings by Professional Censorship Gurus

“Thanks very much to States United for the kind offer to let us piggy back on some of the deep scanning you’re contracting for election threats and disinformation,” Richer emailed then-States United Senior Counsel Bo Dul on June 17, 2022. Richer indicated his office and “some … partners at the county” do some of this work already, but that he would “love to fill any holes” with the offer from States United.

A few minutes later, Dul told Richer that the States United senior adviser “leading our disinfo work,” Caroline Chambers, would be “circl[ing] up with our partners at ISD and your team to set up a call soon.” Before working for States United, Dul was the senior elections policy adviser and general counsel in the Arizona secretary of state’s office under Democrat Katie Hobbs. Now she’s again working as general counsel for Hobbs, who became governor of Arizona last year. 

Chambers sent an email to Dul on June 21 and copied Richer, indicating she wanted to “set up a briefing.” On June 23, a States United staffer emailed Chambers, Dul, and other recipients a link to a Zoom meeting with the subject line “Maricopa County Recorder’s Office x SUDC x ISD Briefing.” The meeting was scheduled for June 28.

A “management analyst and special assistant to the Maricopa County Recorder” emailed staff on June 27, reminding them about the briefing the next morning. 

The assistant pointed recipients to “background information on the Electoral Disinformation work the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) performs,” linking to an ISD webpage on “electoral disinformation.” The page boasts about ISD working with States United ahead of the 2022 midterms to “detect, analyse and escalate threats” like “election denialist activity,” and links to news clips of ISD representatives celebrating efforts to pressure Big Tech into censoring more speech.

The June 27, 2022 email from the “special assistant” indicated Richer was traveling at the time of the briefing and may or may not have attended the call, but wanted his staff to “go ahead” and attend either way.

Asked how long the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office has collaborated with States United and ISD and whether they are currently working with those groups, a representative from Richer’s office told The Federalist the recorder has “worked with numerous entities” over “the last several years.”

“We have received information from States United Democracy Center regarding election worker safety and, as we do with all new information, taken it into consideration,” the representative said, before listing ways the office has made itself “widely available to the public.”

Attempt to Cancel a Professor for Retweeting Election Post

Just the next month, Richer emailed Arizona State University officials to suggest they fire Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Associate Aaron Ludwig for his online speech. Richer was upset because Ludwig had retweeted election concerns.

“He is a regular purveyor of election disinformation and misinformation,” Richer wrote on July 31, linking to Ludwig’s account on Twitter (now X). “I ask that you assess if he is fit to be part of the ASU faculty.”

Richer claimed Ludwig was “promoting messages that encourage harassment of and violence toward” two Maricopa County Elections Department employees. The recorder included several screenshots of tweets Ludwig reposted, including one that accused the employees of improperly using a security badge and deleting election files and another that was critical of Richer himself.

“The allegations are, of course, errant nonsense that only imbecilic troglodytes could possibly believe after five minutes of research,” Richer spewed in the email, referencing the retweet. 

An ASU dean, Cynthia Lietz, sent an email to Richer the same day with the subject line “RE: Aaron Ludwig.”

“Thank you for this important information, we will look into this,” she wrote.

Dul, the States United operative, also emailed Richer and his staff the next day with the subject line “Re: Aaron Ludwig.” The entire body of the email was redacted when released to The Federalist.

Months passed, but Richer wouldn’t let Ludwig’s speech go. He followed up with Lietz on Feb. 6, 2023, in the same email thread.

“Did anything ever come of this?” he asked.

“Yes, we did address this,” Lietz wrote in an email the next day.

Ludwig told The Federalist his supervisors never discussed the matter with him, but he first heard about the situation in April when acquaintances found the interchange in a public records request. He said he thinks Richer’s actions violate the First Amendment.

“The government should not be allowed, and I believe, is not allowed pursuant to the First Amendment, to censor free speech unless it is those few things that can” constitutionally be regulated, he said.

Ludwig was chief of the racketeering and asset forfeiture section at the Arizona Attorney General’s Office from 2011 to 2014, and a special prosecutor for the office until 2015, according to his LinkedIn.

“I led Arizona’s charge against organized crime and the southern border, the transnational criminal organizations including all the drug cartels,” he told The Federalist. “For somebody to attack my background and credentials and professionalism and integrity, and accuse me of being some filthy liar or anything is so offensive. It’s destructive to my reputation. I believe it’s defamatory per se.”

Called Free Speech a ‘Thorn in the Side of My Office’

Richer recently lost the Republican primary for county recorder. He initially campaigned on election integrity, but once in office, he used “his perch as an opportunity to regularly defend the Democrat-run 2020 election in Maricopa County, write op-eds at CNN against the type of election audits he conducted to gain power, draft lengthy screeds lambasting Republican leaders and voters for their election integrity concerns, and push ranked-choice voting and other efforts critics say are disastrous for voter confidence in elections,” as the Federalist’s Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway previously reported.

“The Constitution today is in some ways a thorn in the side of my office. Specifically the First Amendment,” the recorder allegedly wrote in a draft speech, according to Just the News. The outlet also obtained a document with instructions on “banning a user on social media,” which the county reportedly told Just the News was “a draft document of ideas that were brought up in a meeting but never implemented.” Richer has also worked with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — the federal government’s censorship “nerve center” — in his war on unapproved speech.

Richer, who has become a corporate media darling for criticizing the election integrity concerns of his former supporters, has also attracted the attention of Democrat megadonor Reid Hoffman. During Richer’s unsuccessful primary bid, Hoffman helped fund mailers backing the recorder, as The Federalist previously reported.

For more election news and updates, visit electionbriefing.com.

Logan Washburn is a staff writer covering election integrity. He graduated from Hillsdale College, served as Christopher Rufo’s editorial assistant, and has bylines in The Wall Street Journal, The Tennessean, and The Daily Caller. Logan is originally from Central Oregon but now lives in rural Michigan.