Holidaze Week: Lake Woe? Be Gone! Con't

We've now reached the "and find out" phase of Kari Lake's "election fraud" crash and burn nonsense, as confirmed Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs is seeking $500,000 in sanctions and other punishment for Lake's colossal time waste of a lawsuit.

Democratic Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs and Maricopa County filed for sanctions Monday against Republican Kari Lake, less than 48 hours after a judge ruled against Lake's efforts to have herself declared the winner of Arizona's governor race.

Hobbs and the county asked for sanctions against Lake and her legal team after an Arizona judge denied Lake's bid to reverse the results of the November election in a two-day trial. Lake, a prominent election denier and Trump ally, was allowed to go to trial last week with two of her 10 claims, which alleged misconduct with ballot printers and problems with ballot chain of custody.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson denied Lake’s challenge after the trial in a 10-page ruling Saturday. He said the court did not find clear and convincing evidence of misconduct that would have changed the election results. Thompson also noted that the defendants had stated their intention to seek sanctions against Lake and ordered them to file a motion for sanctions by Monday morning.

Attorneys for Hobbs, who has been Arizona's secretary of state for four years, joined the county in its filing Monday seeking $25,050 from Lake, which includes attorney fees for Hobbs and the state’s most populous county. The county took aim at Lake’s remarks before the election indicating she would not accept the results unless she won, as well as her “groundless” and “frivolous” lawsuit after the election was certified.

“Before a single vote was counted in the 2022 general election, Kari Lake publicly stated that she would accept the results of the gubernatorial election only if she were the winning candidate,” the county said in the filing.

“But she has not simply failed to publicly acknowledge the election results. Instead, she filed a groundless, seventy-page election contest lawsuit against the Governor-Elect, the Secretary of State, and Maricopa County and several of its elected officials and employees (but no other county or its employees), thereby dragging them and this Court into this frivolous pursuit.”

Lake plans to appeal but it's a moot point as the election was duly certified and Hobbs will be sworn in on Monday as Governor. There's nothing Lake can do to prevent it, and if Lake decides she's going to do something extremely stupid and/or extralegal, I hope Hobbs doesn't hesitate to press charges.

We'll see. This should be over, but it's not going to be anytime soon, I suspect.

Holidaze Week: Lake Woe? Be Gone!

Kari Lake just lost her ridiculous "voting fraud" case in Arizona, and she gets nothing but coal (and hopefully crushing legal and financial sanctions) for Christmas.

An Arizona judge on Saturday rebuffed an effort by Kari Lake, the defeated GOP candidate for governor in Arizona, to reverse the outcome of her November election, ruling against her after a two-day trial that showcased speculation about systematic malfeasance at the polls but failed to prove it.

The finding was in line with recent judgments against Abe Hamadeh and Mark Finchem, the unsuccessful candidates for attorney general and secretary of state, respectively, who also sought to challenge their losses. Taken together, the rulings show how the judiciary in Arizona, a state rife with distrust in the democratic process, rejected challenges to election results and affirmed the will of voters.

Lake, a former television news anchor and acolyte of former president Donald Trump, lost the Nov. 8 election by more than 17,000 votes. After making election denialism a centerpiece of her campaign, she refused to concede, even after the result was certified on Dec. 5. Days later, she sued her opponent, Democrat Katie Hobbs, as well as officials in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and more than half the state’s voters.

Lake’s complaint, which asked that she be declared the winner, centered on problems with printers in Maricopa County. Those problems required some voters to wait in line, travel to another polling place or deposit their ballots in secure drawers for tabulation at a central location. County officials have said the problems resulted from insufficient printer heat settings. They also acknowledged at trial that “shrink-to-fit” settings at several voting locations caused ballots to be rejected, though they were all duplicated and ultimately counted. A deeper analysis is still underway, they testified.

A judge found on Election Day that the mechanical issues did not prevent anyone from voting. But in a 69-page filing, attorneys for Lake used a grab bag of unproven assertions and anecdotal accounts to argue that “hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots infected the election in Maricopa County.”

The claims reached far beyond the administration of voting to include conspiratorial allegations about efforts to combat election misinformation, which the filing deemed an “unconstitutional government censorship operation,” as well as evidence from the 2020 election.

The judge hearing Lake’s case, Peter A. Thompson of Maricopa County Superior Court, earlier tossed most of her assertions but allowed arguments to proceed on two claims — that employees at Maricopa County’s ballot contractor stuffed extra ballots into the system and that the printer problems on Election Day were intentional.

In Saturday’s 10-page ruling, Thompson said the court “acknowledges the anger and frustration of voters who were subjected to inconvenience and confusion at voter centers as technical problems arose during the 2022 general election.”

“But this Court’s duty is not solely to incline an ear to public outcry,” he wrote. “It is to subject plaintiff’s claims and defendants’ actions to the light of the courtroom and scrutiny of the law.”

 

Katie Hobbs' defense team was not nearly as sanguine.

A lawyer for Hobbs told the court that Lake’s lawsuit represents what is “rotten in Arizona.”

“For the past several years, our democracy and its basic guiding principles have been under sustained assault from candidates who just cannot or will not accept the fact that they lost,” said the lawyer, Abha Khanna. “The judiciary has served as a bulwark against these efforts to undo our democratic system from within, and we ask this court to assume that role once again.”

In a closing statement, Khanna said, “Kari Lake lost this election and must lose this election contest. The reason she lost is not because of a printer error, not because of missing paperwork, not because the election was rigged against her, and certainly not for a lack of a full opportunity to prove her claims in a court of law.”

“Kari Lake lost the election because, at the end of the day, she received fewer votes than Katie Hobbs,” Khanna added.

 

Sadly, I don't think we've seen the last of Kari Lake. I think she's going to lose her bolts and come apart, right up until the Arizona State Capitol Police decide to detain her for threats made on the life of Hobbs. 

On the other hand, Arizona Republicans, narrowly controlling the state legislature, can certainly try to make Hobbs' life miserable. We'll see if this Lake drowns in her own misery.

 

 

 

Last Call For Lake Woe? Be Gone!

Professional Arizona Republican Election Loser Kari Lake will actually get a chance to prove her claims in court, as a judge tossed most of her election fraud case...but not all of it.

 

A Maricopa County Superior Court judge ruled Monday that Arizona Republican Kari Lake, who lost last month’s gubernatorial race, will be allowed to head to trial on two narrow claims in an election lawsuit.

Judge Peter Thompson ruled that the majority of the claims Lake made in her initial complaint – 8 out of 10 – would be immediately dismissed. The motion to dismiss hearing in Maricopa County did not present evidence or witness testimony. But on two of the counts, the judge found Lake should be allowed to proceed to a trial to attempt to prove intentional misconduct that resulted in her loss.

Lake lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs, the secretary of state, by about 17,000 votes.

The judge narrowed one allegation involving the printers on Election Day, allowing the Lake campaign to present evidence to back her claim that a Maricopa County employee had interfered with Election Day printers resulting in her losing votes.

The judge will also allow the Lake team to present evidence that Maricopa County violated its election manual regarding ballot chain of custody. The Lake campaign claims an unknown number of ballots were added, resulting in her loss. The judge called this claim a dispute of fact, rather than law, so Lake should be allowed to present her evidence in court.

Despite most of her lawsuit being dismissed, Lake tweeted, “Our Election Case is going to trial. Katie Hobbs attempt to have our case thrown out FAILED. She will have to take the stand & testify.”

She added: “Arizona, We will have our day in court!”

Lake has been tweeting out links to a fundraising site, urging followers to send money to support her legal effort.

The judge also ruled that Hobbs could be called to testify in her capacity as secretary of state, an office she’ll hold until she is sworn in as governor.

Democratic attorney Marc Elias, whose legal team is representing Hobbs, framed the court decision as a victory, pointing out that most of the claims were dismissed and that a higher hurdle lies ahead in the trial. “Proving intentional wrongdoing and that it affected the outcome of the election will be impossible for Lake,” Elias tweeted.

 

Again, Lake is alleging deliberate election fraud, specifically through the fabrication of ballots by Katie Hobbs. She will have to prove that to a judge.

It will not end well for her, and that's a good thing. Heavy sanctions should be applied to Lake and her legal team when this suit fails.

They Voted Like Their Country Depended On It, Con't

Arizonans elected Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs for Governor, sending Kari Lake to the bottom of the mud.

Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs has defeated Republican Kari Lake in Arizona's race for governor, NBC News projected Monday.

Hobbs' victory is key for Democrats in a presidential battleground state and a rebuke to a prominent election denier — although the closeness of the contest left the result up in the air for nearly a week.

“I am honored to have been selected to serve as the next Governor of Arizona,” Hobbs said in a statement Monday night. “I want to thank the voters for entrusting me with this immense responsibility. It is truly an honor of a lifetime, and I will do everything in my power to make you proud.”

A record number of early ballots were dropped off on Election Day in Maricopa County, officials said, which had to be processed in a more time-intensive manner that includes signature verification. Maricopa, the state's most populous county, said Sunday that it estimated that its count was 94% complete after it received a historic 290,000 of those early ballots on Election Day.

Lake, a MAGA firebrand and former local newscaster who closely linked her campaign to former President Donald Trump and his false claims of a rigged election in Arizona, ultimately fell short after polling in the final weeks of the campaign suggested she was grabbing the lead from Hobbs, who as secretary of state in 2020 vocally defended the state's election system and the accuracy of the count.

About 90 minutes after NBC News called the race for Hobbs, Lake tweeted: "Arizonans know BS when they see it."

 

Lake of course is not going to give up. Me, I expect Arizona Republicans to propose a recall election next spring, as California Republicans tried to do to Gov. Gavin Newsom. According to Arizona's recall process, Hobbs would have to be in office for at least six months, and then Republicans would need to collect enough signatures for a total of 25% of all 2022 voters within 120 days.

However even will all that, the soonest a recall could be put to voters is 2024 given that there's a 60-day period to review signatures, and that "The recall election will occur on the first consolidated election date that is at least 90 days in the future", meaning that there wouldn't be enough time to put it on the 2023 ballot (if off-year elections even count as "consolidated").

Keep an eye on that page to see if recall petitions are filed.