A federal judge on Monday granted a prosecution request to dismiss an indictment against a San Diego man charged with threatening an Arizona election official after the alleged victim expressed to the government “an earnest interest in being done with the case.”
That official, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican who has drawn the ire of his own party’s members for defending the integrity of Arizona’s elections, told the Union-Tribune on Monday that during the prosecution of William Michael Hyde, there seemed to be little empathy for him as a victim, and he had started to question the benefit of having reported the threats.
Hyde, 53, was set to go on trial next month on a charge of interstate threatening communication. He had faced up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. Prosecutors alleged he left profanity-laced threats on Richer’s personal phone in late 2022 after a contentious public hearing during which Richer had certified the results of the midterm elections in which Democrats had performed well.
“The words used by Mr. Hyde were not threats,” Vikas Bajaj, one of his attorneys, said Friday. “While Mr. Hyde and I are grateful for the Department of Justice’s ultimate realization that this conduct doesn’t rise to the level of a crime, we’re similarly disappointed that Mr. Hyde has suffered through irreparable harm to his character to get to this point of finality.”
According to prosecutors, Hyde’s first message to Richer said “run” with an added expletive. He allegedly called back one minute later, stating: “You wanna cheat our elections? You wanna screw Americans out of true votes? We’re coming, (expletive). You’d better (expletive) hide.”
Hyde and his attorneys had conceded that he left the messages but maintained his words were protected by the First Amendment. “While we were looking forward to vindicating our client at trial, we are nonetheless thrilled that the government has dismissed the charges against our innocent client,” attorney John Rice said Friday.
U.S. Attorney Tara McGrath said in a statement that despite the dismissal of Hyde’s case, “Our commitment remains steady: We will use the law to protect civil discourse, strengthen democratic engagement, and safeguard election officials from threats and harassment.”
In a motion filed Friday, prosecutors wrote that they were seeking dismissal because they recently “became aware of issues with a necessary and critical witness that (the government) believes make it unlikely to obtain a conviction at trial.”
Richer told the Union-Tribune in emails Monday that he expressed to prosecutors his “earnest interest” in the case ending and explained the toll it had taken on him over the past two years.
“I’ve had to meet with federal agents and attorneys multiple times, I’ve had to produce documents pursuant to a court subpoena from my personal email and cell phone, my office has had to produce many documents pursuant to a subpoena, I’ve had to do trial preparation, and I’ve had to rearrange my schedule multiple times to account for the timeline changes requested by Mr. Hyde,” Richer wrote.
Richer is leaving office in January after losing his Republican primary in July to a candidate who has cast doubt on past election results. He wrote that he’s excited to move on with his life and had “zero enthusiasm” to participate in Hyde’s trial during the holiday season and his last days in office.
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“There consistently did not seem to be much empathy for the victim in this case,” Richer wrote. “… The benefit of reporting Mr. Hyde’s voice messages had become very questionable to me, and I’m very glad to see the end of this case.”
On Sunday, Richer also settled a defamation lawsuit he had filed against Kari Lake, a former Republican candidate for governor and senate in Arizona. Richer had alleged that Lake falsely accused him of “intentionally sabotaging the election” after she lost the 2022 governor’s race. Lake also lost her senate race earlier this month.
Richer and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors drew fierce criticism after the 2022 midterms from Republican leaders in Arizona and around the country who questioned the election results in the county, which comprises Phoenix and its surrounding suburbs and is home to about three-fifths of Arizona’s population.
In the lead-up to a Nov. 28 meeting to certify election results, the chairman of the Board of Supervisors was moved to an undisclosed location for his safety because of threats on social media, NBC News reported. Huge crowds gathered outside the meeting, and inside the building they booed and disrupted the supervisors and election officials. Public speakers spent most of two hours urging the supervisors not to certify the results, sometimes invoking threats and violent language.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution necessary,” one woman told the supervisors, according to footage of the meeting broadcast by FOX 10 Phoenix.
Hyde called Richer and left the messages the day after that meeting.
