The chairman of the Arizona Republican Party, Jeff DeWit, resigned Wednesday, saying that the party’s one-time nominee for Senate there, Kari Lake, blackmailed him.

The incident began with Ms. Lake releasing a video of Mr. DeWit appearing to offer Ms. Lake a job in exchange for her not running for Senate, with a recording of a phone conversations showing Mr. DeWit saying “There are very powerful people who want to keep you out.”

The conversation was recorded last March, when Ms. Lake was gearing  up for an unsuccessful legal challenge to her loss in the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial race and while GOP officials were openly talking about recruiting more electable candidates after a bruising midterm election cycle.

In a statement, Mr. DeWit said that he had planned to fight to keep his position at the head of the Arizona GOP until Ms. Lake contacted him saying that she would release another recording of Mr. DeWit.

Mr. DeWit said in a statement that he doesn’t know what the other recording might contain and resigned. He also said that the recording had been “selectively edited” and called the move by Ms. Lake a “deceptive tactic.”

“Since our conversation where I advised Lake to postpone her campaign and aim for the Governor’s position in two years, she has been on a mission to destroy me,” Mr. DeWit said in a statement. “The release of our conversation by Lake confirms a disturbing tendency to exploit private interactions for personal gain.

Mr. DeWit also denounced Ms. Lake’s “habit of secretly recording personal and private conversations,” adding that this is “obviously a concern given how much interaction she has with high profile people including President Trump.” Mr. DeWit went on to accuse Ms. Lake of orchestrating “this entire situation to have control over the state party.” 

Ms. Lake is expected to run for the Senate in Arizona this year, though Republicans have expressed doubts about her electability, given her loss in the governor’s race in 2022.