SANCTIONS: Kari Lake keeps failing in court — Now she faces consequences
Maricopa County defendants are seeking sanctions against the failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and her attorneys on the grounds that they made “demonstrably false statements” in their case seeking to overturn her election loss.
Lake is still trying to win the 2022 election for Governor of Arizona, and she’s following directly in the footsteps of her idol, Donald Trump, right down to failed lawsuits.
Now, she and her attorneys may also face sanctions for using the courtroom to promote false claims.
Lake’s last round of courtroom antics centered around the claim that signature verification was not done in Maricopa County, which she attempted to prove by bringing witnesses who explained how they’d actually done the signature verification in Maricopa County.
Her witnesses even described how the redundancies in the system provided correction if signatures were verified too quickly and had various levels to re-check.
Lake and her attorneys argued that all of this proved that the system had failed and that the election had been unfair.
Now she’s appealing to the Supreme Court, but before she gets a response from that panel, sanctions are being sought. From the filing:
“Lake and her counsel proceeded to trial on a claim regarding signature verification that she knew lacked factual merit based on her own witness’ statements. This Court’s May 15 Order on her Rule 60 Motion limited Lake’s case to a single issue: her claim that Maricopa County did not do any signature verification in violation of A.R.S. § 16-550(A), and that the County’s alleged failure to so do materially affected the results of the 2022 general election.”
This is included along with several other claims by Lake that are contradicted by evidence, including an investigation by former Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Ruth McGregor, which Lake falsely claimed found testimony by Maricopa Director of Elections Scott Jarrett to be fraudulent, when in truth, “the McGregor Report did nothing to establish that any of Jarrett’s testimony was fraudulent—it established that Jarrett’s testimony was accurate,” according to the filing.
The most egregious claim in the filing is Lake’s suggestion that there was a deliberate manipulation of the election against her:
‘Lake’s counsel falsely claimed at oral argument that “the election was rigged.” Lake and her counsel then failed to introduce any evidence during the three day trial to support this wrongful statement. Wrongfully and publicly asserting that the election was ‘rigged’ is heinous and profoundly harmful.”
The defendants, including Governor Katie Hobbs, who actually won the election in November, are seeking not only sanctions but permission to file requesting that Lake be required to cover their attorney fees.
