Kari Lake’s first lawsuit challenging her 2022 loss to Katie Hobbs in the Arizona gubernatorial race resulted in her lawyers being sanctioned and fined for presenting such a bogus filing, which did nothing but waste the court’s time. Her one attorney has a history of that, having represented the group running our stupid “audit,” the inexperienced and inept Cyber Ninjas, who were fined into oblivion.
Lake’s second lawsuit outlined 10 counts of illegal or incompetent acts that her lawyers claimed flipped the election to Katie Hobbs, so Lake should be declared the winner or at least a new election should be held. The 10 counts included everything from the vulnerability of mail-in voting (Arizona’s been doing it for 30 years), to Katie Hobbs censoring social media posts (no, she didn’t), to the printer problem that affected about a third of Maricopa County’s polling stations, which is mentioned in every Republican lawsuit.
All but two two counts were thrown out by Judge Peter Thompson, who was appointed by former Republican Gov. Jan Brewer. Judge Thompson set aside two full days this week for Lake’s team to prove that the printer problem and their improper chain-of-custody claims were intentional, and that these actions affected the vote to such an extent they changed the outcome.
After Day One, journalists and lawyers agreed Lake’s team did not present a “smoking gun” that proved intentionality or effect.
Kari Lake’s legal team failed to provide a smoking gun on the first day of trial in her election suit to in an effort to prove her claims that a Maricopa County employee tampered with ballot printers or intentionally failed to follow chain-of-custody rules.
When pressed by the county’s attorneys, most of Lake’s witnesses admitted their suspicions were just that—suspicions based on hearsay and speculation. One of Lake’s IT experts, Clay Parikh, who previously appeared at MyPillowGuy’s stolen-election rallies, spent a lot of time explaining how 19-inch ballots printed on 20-inch paper resulted in unreadable ballots, but he then said they were eventually counted.
That theme of “potential problem yes but proven outcome no” was true across the board. Yes, there were printer problems and yes they created long lines, but Arizona’s had much longer lines after Republicans dramatically cut the number of polling places. Of the 220 people listed in Lake’s lawsuit who said they were inconvenienced, 217 either waited the extra 30 to 90 minutes while the printers were fixed or voted elsewhere.
Today did not go any better for Kari Lake.
Republican Kari Lake didn’t offer evidence to back her claims of widespread, intentional misconduct on Election Day at her two-day trial challenging her loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs in Arizona governor’s race, lawyers for the state said Thursday.
Lake also never established her claim that printer problems at Maricopa County polling places were intentional acts that would have changed the race’s outcome had they not occurred ...
Another Lake witness, whose polling firm earned an F rating from FiveThirtyEight, claimed the long lines resulted in 25,000 to 40,000 people not voting, and most of them were Republicans. University of Wisconsin political science professor Kenneth Mayer said, “There is absolutely no evidence to support that conclusion,” calling the claim “a series of assumptions and speculation.” That would be a good title for the movie Netflix will probably make: Assumptions and Speculation.
The linked stories include a lot more specifics about the claims. Heck, it took two days to present and debate them, so the two sides went very deep into the weeds concerning ballot design, voting machines, printers, chain of custody, and other election details. I watched some of both hearings and read some analysis, and I’m still fuzzy on the IT matters, but one thing is clear:
Lake’s attorneys were following Rudy Giuliani’s legal game plan when he tried to convince Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers to buy his stop-the-steal BS : “We’ve got lots of theories, we just don’t have the evidence,” Giuliani told Bowers. That’s what Lake’s team has: theories, speculation, guesswork, hearsay, a lot of it pushed by MAGAts, people who breathe conspiracy—but no proof of any wrongdoing by an identified person, or persons, that would have changed the outcome. You’d think if there was a conspiracy, an email, text, or written document would exist mentioning the scheme, or someone would’ve stepped forward.
Kari Lake has said she may appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court if Judge Thompson rules against her since, Lake said after the hearing, “We proved without a shadow of a doubt that there was malicious intent.” Ah, no. The Judge has five days to rule. Perhaps if he follows the earlier example and sanctions or fines Lake’s lawyers that might convince her to just stop it. I doubt it, though. She’s learned to lie, divide, use the courts, and pump the grift from the master.
Two related updates: A judge just tossed Republican Abe Hamadeh’s court challenge in the Arizona AG race, and (JFC!) Oath Keeper and failed Secretary of State candidate Mark Finchem, whose earlier lawsuit was so bad his lawyer was sanctioned and ordered to pay court costs, says he will file another appeal and ask for an election do-over. He lost to Adrian Fontes by more than 120,000 votes.
UPDATE: Judge Thompson dismissed Lake’s lawsuit Saturday morning! Diary here.