An Arizona GOP official tore into the state's election recount on Fox News: 'This was not a stolen election'

• An Arizona GOP election official tore into the state's election audit on Fox News on Monday.
• The state ordered an audit into the presidential election amid claims of rigged ballots.
• Maricopa County recorder Stephen Richer said the claims pushed by Trump and others were false.

An Arizona GOP official tore into the Maricopa County election audit on Monday, saying the claims of voter fraud that prompted the recount were baseless and likening the situation to a "borderline dystopia."

Arizona in April began auditing presidential-election results for Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, which President Joe Biden won by more than 45,000 votes.

Maricopa County recorder Stephen Richer told Fox News on Monday that the continued claims of election fraud in the county by Trump and his associates were "false."

Even though he would have liked them to win, they did not, he said.

"I'm as Republican as they come," he told Fox's Bret Baier. "There's a lot I'd be willing to do for a Republican nominee for president, but lie about the election is not one of those things."

Donald Trump repeated his claims of election fraud in Arizona at a rally over the weekend, saying among other things that hundreds of thousands of ballots had been printed on illegal paper.

Richer said of the former president's claims: "It's disappointing. It's borderline dystopian. And unfortunately, when the president says something like that, it's very hard to put the genie back in the bottle."

The Republican-led effort to audit the results has been heavily criticized. State Democrats characterized it in April as an attempt to legitimize claims of election fraud.

Election officials have found 182 potential cases of electoral fraud out of a possible 3 million, the Associated Press reported last week.

The company running the audit, Cyber Ninjas, has never run an audit before, and its founder, Doug Logan, has promoted pro-Trump conspiracy theories on social media.

Richer told Fox that a specific claim repeated by Liz Harrington, a former Trump spokesperson, earlier on the program was false. Harrington said Arizona ballots had been cast illegally after the deadline.

"So that's inaccurate," Richer said. He continued, "As long as they filled it out before October 15, then it's still a valid voter and that vote should count."

He said two other claims repeated by Harrington were false: "Some of these claims that we thought were like the undead have come back, I guess."

"There's nothing to hide. This was not a stolen election," Richer said.