A nice present arrived shortly before Christmas when we learned that the defamation lawsuit filed by a county employee against failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake would move forward. This week Lake filed a challenge to Judge Jay Adelman’s decision to hear the case; the former TV reporter and full-time spokesmodel for fuzzy wallpaper argued that the entire Court of Appeals should consider her petition, not just one judge, because her lawsuit is “a matter of significant statewide importance,” i.e., “I need to keep the grift going.”
I can’t imagine Lake sleeps too well these days, because she did exactly what Rudy Giuliani did to Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman, and we know how that turned out: $148 million (and they’re suing him again). The two stories are similar: Giuliani blamed Trump’s 2020 Georgia election loss on a made-up conspiracy involving two election workers, upending their lives; Lake falsely blamed her roughly 17,000-vote loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs in 2022 on Stephen Richer, the Maricopa County Recorder, turning his world to shit.
Lake initially accused Richer, who is a Republican, of adding 300,000 illegal ballots to the total vote count, like that would be an easy thing to pull off with no one noticing. No one has, BTW. Exactly none of the Republican court challenges to the 2022 Arizona election (from LakeX3, Finchem, Hamadeh, Masters, others) presented any evidence of vote tampering beyond conspiracy theories. No dead people voted, no Mexicans crossed the border for Dems. Giuliani summed up his team’s approach when Arizona Rep. Rusty Bowers asked for proof: “We’ve got lots of theories, we just don’t have the evidence.”
Lake parroted a lot of the bonkers, evidence-free accusations in her fuzzy videos and at rallies, often zeroing in on Stephen Richer. At one event she said Richer and fellow Republican Supervisor Bill Gates intentionally monkeyed with the tabulators to benefit Katie Hobbs:
Lake told her followers during a Jan. 29 “Save Arizona Rally” that Richer and Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates intentionally printed incorrectly sized ballot images on Election Day 2022 as a form of “sabotage” because they knew that the majority of in-person voters that day would be Republicans supporting Lake, and that the incorrectly-sized ballots would cause the tabulators to reject those ballots.
That had its desired effect, and soon Richer was arranging for extra security at his home and office. Supervisor Gates stepped down, after announcing he suffered from PTSD brought on by the threats. Richer not only stayed but is running again, while holding accountable Arizona’s likely Republican nominee for US Senate.
Since Richer filed his defamation lawsuit last March, Lake’s attorneys have been trying their damndest to get the case dismissed, because they obviously saw what happened to Giuliani. Her attorneys pleaded that Lake has a First Amendment right to express her views, especially as she campaigns, but Richer pointed out in his lawsuit, and Judge Adelman agreed, that free speech ends when it’s wrapped in lies that endanger others. The judge’s decision notes that Lake’s comments about Richer and Gates are provably false, while Richer makes a strong case for how his family’s life has been turned upside down by Lake’s lies.
Another Lake defense is that her words are “rhetorical hyperbole” that shouldn’t be taken as fact (maybe a subcategory of “alternative facts”). Well, a lot of MAGA goobers did interpret her words as fact and acted on them, harassing Richer and his wife at home and work. And, really, does Lake’s language in the block quote above sound like “rhetorical hyperbole”? It’s a very specific, supposedly factual, accusation: WHO (Richer and Gates), WHAT (intentionally printed incorrect ballots), WHEN (2022 election), WHERE (Maricopa Co.), WHY (to benefit Hobbs).
Lake, Meet Shovel
But they don’t learn, do they? Remember that Giuliani’s culpability had already been decided when his trial started; he was liable for ruining the two election workers’ lives, and the jury trial would determine the amount he owed them. At first, lawyers for Moss and Freeman outlined a settlement of about $24 million per plaintiff, but Giuliani’s sidewalk interviews, where he doubled down on his allegations and said he’d prove everything when he took the stand, only to not testify, probably did not sit well with the jury, which later awarded Moss and Freeman about three times the original amount.
You’d think Kari Lake might learn something from that—like keep your friggin’ trap shut about the person who’s filed a defamation lawsuit against you! You’d think she’d get that it doesn’t help her defense to do more of the thing she’s accused of doing. If you thought that, you thought wrong.
“The person behind it is Stephen Richer, he is a guy who runs our elections, and obviously we had rigged elections here in Arizona,” she opined, “and I pointed out everything he did wrong, and I stand by every word I said about Stephen Richer, and if they think I’m going to stop using my First Amendment rights, they’re crazy.”
That’s right, Kari Lake said that this week in Steve Bannon’s cesspool when he asked about Richer’s lawsuit. Rather than mumble something benign like, “I’m innocent and this case should be dismissed,” Lake says Arizona “obviously” had a “rigged” election (no, it didn’t), and she “stand[s] by” her previous accusation that Richer is responsible, which is far from rhetorical hyperbole. It’s a lie and a dangerous one, says Richer, who also says Kari Lake knows it’s a lie.
In that same interview Lake, who hasn’t stopped campaigning for Trump’s VP slot, said “they” unleashed Covid on the world to keep Donald Trump from being re-elected. The woman’s alleged brain is trapped in a conspiratorial sewer. Reporter Laurie Roberts wonders who “they” are (perhaps the lizard people), and she says Lake’s daily nuttery would make for a good SNL skit, if this weren’t “everyday Arizona” where even a narcissistic, misinformed, theocratic bozo can be a US Senator. Unless we elect the man who three years ago literally stood for democracy.
Go Ruben!