Kari Lake’s Umpteenth Effort to Overturn Election She Lost 189 Days Ago Gets Laughed Out of Court
AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin
Failed GOP candidate for governor of Arizona, Kari Lake, lost her last remaining legal challenge to the outcome of the November election won by Democrat Katie Hobbs – some 189 days after the election.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter A. Thompson ruled that Lake and her legal team lacked any “clear and convincing evidence or a preponderance of evidence” that any fraud or misconduct took place in the election.
Lake, who has become a flashpoint of controversy, had declared the election would be rigged even before the voting had started and was a leading figure embracing former President Donald Trump’s roundly debunked allegations that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen. Embracing Trump’s false 2020 election allegations, which have been dismissed as both baseless and inaccurate by everyone from his own former Attorney General Bill Barr, in at least 63 court cases in multiple states, and even two teams of researchers hired by his own campaign, became a kind of litmus test for Trump’s support in the 2022 midterms.
Lake has filed multiple cases and appeals in Arizona courts regarding the election. In early May the Arizona Supreme Court ordered her “attorneys pay $2,000 in sanctions for making an ‘unequivocally false’ claim that more than 35,000 ballots were ‘injected’ into Maricopa County’s total after the election,” reported Axios at the time.
Maricopa County Chairman Clint Hickman, a Republican, hailed the ruling as “justice.”
“Wild claims of rigged elections may generate media attention and fundraising please, but they do not win court cases. When ‘bombshells’ and ‘smoking guns’ are not backed up by facts, they fail in court,” Hickman said in a statement.
Hobbs, who ran a less-than-inspiring campaign, defeated Lake by only 17,000 votes. Lake kicked up a whirlwind of controversy, not only for loudly supporting Trump’s election fraud claims, but with bombastic rhetoric attacking the legacy of the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the media, and wading in on most every other culture war issue that animates the MAGA base.
Lake tweeted “Big announcement tomorrow!” after the ruling was issued, leading many political observers to believe she may launch a new political organization or possibly a bid for the U.S. Senate seat in Arizona up in 2024.
