Locked in a battle with President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice over releasing the state’s voter rolls, Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson was recently asked, hypothetically, if she would hand over Utahns’ voter data if federal disaster assistance was conditioned on releasing those records.

The answer, she said, was no.

“If we don’t have the rule of law, we don’t have anything,” she said. “We don’t have a country, we don’t have freedom, and if we’re willing to trade those things in a moment, then we’re willing to risk an awful lot for temporary gains.”

Henderson’s comments came during a recent episode of PBS’s “Breaking the Deadlock,” a show that proposes a pretend crisis scenario and asks a panel of political experts how they would address the situation.

She was joined on the episode by former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, businessman Mark Cuban and former U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, among others. The group considered an election scenario marked by an FBI raid, a terrorist attack and a president demanding political favors in exchange for disaster relief.

In recent months, Henderson, a Republican, has battled with the actual federal government, which is seeking access to Utah’s voter rolls. The state has gone so far as to take the issue to court and only to give the DOJ publicly accessible information.

And over the last week, Henederson’s tussle with the DOJ heightened after the agency sent a letter threatening criminal penalties if the state does not allow the DOJ to “assist” in “complying” with federal election laws barring noncitizens from voting.

Henderson responded by saying the best way the federal government could assist Utah is by respecting the state’s right to administer elections without interference.

Trump is reportedly giving a speech Thursday evening to address election security.

After responding to the hypothetical scenario where she was asked if she’d exchange “Middlevania” voters’ roll for federal disaster assistance for a dam that was imminently breaking, the drama on “Breaking the Deadlock” escalated.

Henderson, the hypothetical secretary of state, was asked to consider what she would do if the president called in troops to address a terrorist attack and threatened to cancel an upcoming election after people took to the streets to protest the troops.

“Hard no,” she said. The election would go on.

But the drama didn’t stop. How would she respond if the president applied for a search warrant to access the state’s ballots?

“Well, thankfully, we’ve tabletopped this exercise with the county clerks, and now the local election officials and local sheriffs and law enforcement, and nobody gets to touch ballots,” Henderson said. “We have a very strict chain of custody, and that does not get broken.”

And there is a reason, Henderson argued, that states manage elections and not the federal government.

“There is also a deep history over these last 250 years of voter intimidation tactics coming from federal governments that are hostile to the votes of certain people and certain communities,” she said. “So I have a lot of concerns about this, and a lot of questions, and my number one goal is to make sure that every eligible voter can cast a ballot without fear on Election Day.”