I still have a diary up describing the two-day hearing this week, where Kari Lake’s lawyers tried to convince a judge that it was intentional malice that caused Lake to lose the Arizona Governor’s race to Katie Hobbs. Lake’s first lawsuit was thrown out and her lawyers were sanctioned. Today Judge Peter Thompson, a Republican appointee, dismissed her second lawsuit.
An Arizona judge on Saturday ruled against Kari Lake in her challenge of Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs’s (D) victory, dismissing the highest-profile case challenging the midterm election results.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson following a two-day trial found that Lake had not proven that election officials committed intentional misconduct sufficient to change the race’s outcome.
As the earlier diary and a lot of the media coverage note, most of the “evidence” for Lake’s team was witness testimony, and most of that was MAGA-inspired speculation, hearsay, and wild-ass theories—no facts, no evidence, no smoking gun.
Nothing in the lawsuit’s text or thousands of pages of exhibits contained realistic evidence of a conspiracy by Hobbs or county officials, instead relying mostly on witness affidavits.
Judge Thompson agreed, writing, “The Court cannot accept speculation or conjecture in place of clear and convincing evidence.” He did note that there were printer problems in Maricopa County that resulted in long lines—nobody disputes that—but he ruled the technical glitch was not intentional and election workers addressed the problem “with integrity.” Here is his 10-page ruling. My favorite line is at the end:
IT IS ORDERED: confirming the election of Katie Hobbs as Arizona Governor-Elect pursuant to A.R.S. § 16-676(B).
Lake has already said she may appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court, but her lawyers might want to reconsider that. This is the fourth dismissal of a Republican challenge in Arizona, and the courts just might be getting sick of this bullshit—to the point sanctions and fines are in order. Lawyers for Katie Hobbs and Maricopa County said after today’s ruling that they will be “seeking sanctions for presenting nothing but ‘conspiracy theories’ and ‘sour grapes’ in the trial.”
On a related note, yesterday a judge dismissed Republican Abe Hamadeh’s lawsuit in the Arizona AG race.
Happy Christmas indeed!
That didn’t take long. Sing with me: “The Long and Whiny Road...”
She just told the boobs at the Turning Points USA conference, which was here in Phoenix for four days, that “some attorneys have already walked away from the case” because they fear sanctions, fines, even disbarment. For good reason. Today’s ruling won’t help.