Arizona has seen its share of bogus lawsuits challenging the results of the midterm election after the predicted red wave was more like dribbling cat pee, and four of five key statewide races were won by Democrats. Most were razor-thin victories but the ground has shifted, and the future’s so bright I gotta wear shades. Like trump, the GOP losers did not concede, claimed victory, raised money off their resistance, and turned to the courts—only to lose and lose and ...
Failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake alone is responsible for at least three lawsuits (and counting)—one deemed frivolous and immediately tossed, another granted a two-day hearing after which the judge ruled against her and her screwball team, and just today the Arizona Court of Appeals rejected another Lake appeal. Because her lawsuits presented no actual evidence of election tampering, in some cases she was sanctioned and her lawyers, including Alan Dershowitz, were threatened with disbarment, while other attorneys were fined or ordered to pay court costs.
But Lake isn’t the only trump-endorsed Arizona loser jamming up the courts. Secretary of State candidate Mark Finchem has been sanctioned twice for filing bogus lawsuits. The Oath Keeper, who pledged to revamp Arizona’s elections so no Democrat could ever win, lost his race to Adrian Fontes, the official who took on Cyber Ninjas and won. Finchem clearly scared the shit out of people, even Republicans not comfortable with fascism, and he lost by more than 120,000 votes. There’s no friggin’ way Finchem could make up that difference, regardless of the voting irregularities his lawsuits (falsely) claim.
Abraham Hamadeh, the GOP candidate for Attorney General, lost an extremely close race to Democrat Kris Mayes (511 votes), so of course he filed suit and that too was dismissed. Hamadeh continues to threaten additional court action more than three months after the election. I can think of a number of other lawsuits claiming election fraud that were filed in red rural counties, but they too went nowhere and mostly just delayed the vote count.
Kari Lake is still at it, stomping in Iowa this week, keeping her grift going, claiming she’ll appeal to the US Supreme Court. In all of these court filings, Republicans presented no provable election fraud, introduced no factual evidence, and merely offered up conspiracies and conjecture worthy of Q. As a result, the courts have occasionally fined or sanctioned the candidates and their attorneys for wasting the public’s time and money. In extreme cases the lawyers were threatened with disbarment.
It's more than election challenges, however. US Rep. Paul Gosar, failed SoS candidate Mark Finchem, and State Sen. Anthony Kern filed a defamation lawsuit against Democrat Charlene Fernandez after she asked the DOJ to investigate the three bozos’ role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. The trio of election deniers lost that “groundless” case filed “primarily for purposes of harassment,” according to the judge, and the court ordered them to pay Fernandez $75,000 to offset her attorney fees. Instant Karma!
Bottom line: Arizona Republicans are batting .000 with their appeals and other filings, and where the courts have found the lawsuits frivolous, the plaintiffs and/or their attorneys have been penalized financially and/or professionally. Someone’s gotta put a stop to this! How will Republicans recruit attorneys to file their phony-baloney lawsuits if there’s a chance they might have to pay fines and court costs, or even lose their license? How will Republicans continue grifting off the Big Lie if lawyers can’t or won’t help?
Enter Sen. Anthony Kern, who’s got a dog in this fight, since he, Gosar, and Finchem were ordered to reimburse Charlene Fernandez $75,000 after filing a sham defamation lawsuit. They lost because there was nothing defamatory about Fernandez’s request for the DOJ to investigate the three officials’ role in Jan. 6. Both Kern and Finchem attended the Capitol riot and have histories full of seditious statements and activities, while Rep. Gosar has often been named as a central player in planning the insurrection (Gosar ignored a Jan. 6 Committee subpoena).
So this week Sen. Kern introduced a bill that, if passed, would cause the Arizona Bar Association and the Arizona Supreme Court to think twice about disciplining attorneys for filing frivolous lawsuits.
Angry at lawyers being disciplined for making baseless election fraud complaints in Arizona courts, a Republican legislator says the State Bar of Arizona and the Arizona Supreme Court should be barred from punishing those attorneys and be heavily fined if they do so.
By “heavily fined” Sen. Kern means 10 percent of the Bar Association’s annual budget ($1 million) and 10 percent of the Supreme Court’s state appropriation ($10 million). Let’s start with the obvious fact that the Bar is a private organization and the Supreme Court is part of state government. In both instances, the organizations stand at the pinnacle of their respective fields, so who determines whether their decisions to fine, sanction, or otherwise penalize attorneys and plaintiffs are legitimate? Anthony Kern? More or less, yes. He says if a lawsuit is brought in “good faith,” sanctions should not apply. Deniers can always say they’re acting in good faith. The Bar Association sets its policies regarding sanctions, not the Legislature; the Arizona Supreme Court, a completely different branch of government from Sen. Kern, develops its own disciplinary practices unanswerable to legislative meddlers.
Sen. Kern’s bill would ban the two organizations from “impeding … political speech,” which he apparently believes penalties do. The Bar Association and Supreme Court point out, however, that fines, sanctions, and other punitive actions are legal or ethical in nature, not political:
“Current court rules are quite clear on the reasons why an attorney might be subject to disciplinary action—political speech is not one of them.”
How Anthony Kern was appointed Chair of the Senate’s Judicial Committee is a head-scratcher, since he has no legal background other than losing court battles. He has a BA in business administration and took law enforcement classes at a community college but has no legal certification. Sen. Kern was a police officer in the Phoenix suburb of El Mirage but was fired in 2014 for lying to superiors. He was elected to the Legislature that year, where he remained until he lost in 2020, along with Donald Trump. Before Anthony Kern left for D.C. to join other rioters protesting Trump’s loss, he signed Arizona’s “fake elector” document, along with ten other criminals. Clearly, that story isn’t over.
On Jan. 6, 2021, then, you’ll find two of Arizona’s most vocal Stop-the-Steal goobers, Anthony Kern and Mark Finchem, at the Washington D.C. insurrection. Both downplayed their roles but their histories say otherwise. At the same time Rep. Paul Gosar was standing alongside Sen. Ted Cruz, serving as Gosar’s second, as he became the first official to object to his state’s electoral count, as insurrectionists stormed the building. After the riot, Rep. Gosar returned to the chambers and voted with the insurrectionists, a not uncommon act for a congressman who stood with criminal rancher Cliven Bundy against federal agents.
After Jan. 6 Anthony Kern returned to Arizona, an unemployed politician, and eventually he was hired as a ballot counter for the inept, costly, and opaque Maricopa County “audit”—that is until he was identified in the media as a former Republican legislator, vocal election denier, fake elector, and Capitol insurrectionist. Critics already labeled Cyber Ninjas a far-right gaggle of deniers, so Anthony Kern was canned because the “optics” didn’t look good. In a real mind-boggler the next year Kern won his 2022 Senate race.
Now he’s able to introduce legislation that’ll protect him and other deniers, along with their legal teams, when clogging up the courts with empty claims about the 2020 and 2022 elections. Of course Sen. Kern’s bill is only political theater to keep the Big Lie and grift alive, because while the bill passed out of committee along party lines, it’s not going to see Gov. Hobbs’ desk, and even if it did it would immediately find her trash can.