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“We are watching you,” she said. “If you violate an Arizona law, I will prosecute you, we will investigate you, and we will make sure that Arizona laws are enforced. That includes assault, murder, unlawful imprisonment, and other state crimes.”
The most explosive moment came when Mayes invoked Arizona’s Stand Your Ground law. The statute allows individuals to use deadly force if they reasonably believe their life is in danger. Mayes repeatedly suggested that masked agents with limited identification create a scenario where lethal force could be claimed as self defense.
“We’re a gun culture in this state,” she said. “You have these masked Federal officers with very little identification, sometimes no identification, wearing plain clothes and masks. And we have a Stand Your Ground law that says that if you reasonably believe that your life is in danger, and you’re in your house or your car or on your property, that you can defend yourself with lethal force.”
WATCH:
Resnik attempted to slow the conversation, warning that her comments could be interpreted as encouraging violence. Mayes refused to back down.
“Well, but it’s the facts,” Mayes said.
She followed that by acknowledging the obvious contradiction.
“You’re not allowed to shoot peace officers,” she continued. “But how do you know they’re a peace officer?”
Despite insisting she was not giving people a “license” to kill agents, Mayes repeatedly floated a legal defense for someone who might do exactly that.
“It becomes, did they reasonably know that they were a peace officer? You know?”
Later in the interview, Mayes tried to personalize the argument by claiming gun ownership herself.
“By the way, I’m a gun owner,” she said, adding that she would shoot someone approaching her if she could not tell “whether they’re a police officer.”
She doubled down again, blaming federal authorities for what she called a volatile situation.
“Well, but it’s the facts. It’s the fact that we have a Stand Your Ground law, and we have, in other states, uniformed, masked people, who can’t be identified as police officers. That is a problem.”
Mayes went on to say the situation has “all the makings for you know, shoot out at the O.K. Corral all over again,” a comment critics say casually normalizes deadly encounters between citizens and law enforcement.
Throughout the interview, Mayes leaned heavily on familiar left wing rhetoric, accusing ICE of “thuggish, brutish behavior.” She also introduced a new claim that federal agents are targeting tribal members in Arizona, asserting that a Navajo man was detained “because of the color of his skin.”
The conversation then veered into election politics. Mayes warned of federal interference ahead of the 2026 midterms and suggested her office would physically block any attempt to seize election equipment.
“We will do everything that physically that we can do to prevent them from seizing anything,” she said.
When pressed on what that meant, she doubled down.
“It means what it means. No one’s taking anything out of our election polling places.”
For critics, the interview painted a disturbing picture. Arizona’s Attorney General appeared to rationalize deadly force against federal agents, inflame tensions in a heavily armed state, and preview resistance to lawful federal authority. Conservatives argue that if any Republican official spoke this way about law enforcement, the media response would be swift and unforgiving.
Instead, Mayes walked away from the interview having normalized the idea that masked ICE agents could be met with bullets and blamed the federal government for whatever violence might follow.
