A couple weeks ago Maricopa County was ordered to turn over more than 2 million ballots to the Arizona Senate, which had subpoenaed them in order to prove fraud, despite two recounts showing the voting machines and counts were accurate. Joe Biden won Arizona, suck on it. The GOP, however, did not like the hand recount method that was used and insisted on their own audit, hence the subpoena.
Last week the ballots did arrive at the Senate Building in large trucks, 73 pallets stacked with millions of votes. As I wrote at the time, not only was the Senate unprepared to receive millions of ballots, they also had no way to count them, after learning that the firm they initially hired to conduct the audit has ties to Trump and is mired in some legal doo-doo.
Immediately after the Nov. 3 election the Stop-the-Steal protests started in Arizona, and lawsuits were threatened left and right—against the County, the State, anyone, while goobers harassed election workers and protested outside the home of Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat. On January 6, it was Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar who was standing at the mic objecting to his state’s electoral vote count when the insurrection got serious (not for Sen. Ron Johnson, apparently, who said those white folks in helmets and camo were law-abiding citizens who presented no danger).
Today, a Maricopa County judge ordered the Arizona Republican Party to pay more than $18,000 to the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office to reimburse the agency for the court costs they incurred to fight the baseless lawsuits:
Calling its lawsuit challenging 2020 election procedures “groundless” and “disingenuous,” a judge has ordered the Arizona Republican Party — and its lawyers — to pay the state thousands of dollars in legal fees.
In his ruling, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge John Hannah contended the GOP's team acted in “bad faith” when it questioned the process for auditing voting machines and sought to delay certification of election results last November.
To be fair, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs said her Office spent more than $152,000 in court costs, so the award is a pittance and I’m not sure why it’s so little, but Hobbs also said the judge’s order sends a message to “those willing to abuse the legal process for political purposes.” That message may be more significant than the amount, and the party’s attorneys, who acted in “bad faith,” may soon receive another message.
The GOP lawyers said all along that their recount was necessary because otherwise there “will be lingering questions about the legitimacy” of the election results. Judge Hannah was having none of it, pointing out that it’s their legal shenanigans, not Arizona’s electoral process, that “cast false shadows on the election’s legitimacy.”
Meanwhile, two GOP lawyers who brought the lawsuits are named in another complaint before the Arizona Bar Association. Keep digging, Republicans.