Here’s a story that may sound familiar: a candidate running in the most recent elections lost their bid for the office they ran for and refuses to concede. Instead, the beaten candidate claims that the election was stolen, that Democrats are behind the theft, and that lawsuits in court are the only way to resolve the matter and reveal the “true winner” of the elections.
If this is all sounding familiar, it should. Except this time, it’s not Donald Trump making these outlandish claims. It’s Trump acolyte and election denier, Kari Lake.
NEW: Arizona judge issues sanctions against Kari Lake's attorneys for bringing "frivolous claims" in a lawsuit brought by Lake and Mark Finchem that attempted to prohibit electronic voting machines in Arizona. The lawsuit was dismissed earlier this year.https://t.co/sAhjqIQhi0
— Democracy Docket (@DemocracyDocket) December 1, 2022
Lake ran for governor against Katie Hobbs by less than one percent, and she isn’t handling the loss well. Instead of conceding, she insists that a massive conspiracy between Democrats in Arizona and a vote tabulating machine company wrongfully denied her the rightful win. She and her attorneys filed a lawsuit claiming that, unless Arizona uses paper ballots, none of their elections are valid.
In the legal decision, the judge in the case wrote that:
‘Plaintiffs alleged that the machines are “rife” with cybersecurity vulnerabilities and allow for unauthorized persons to manipulate the reported vote counts in an election and potentially change the winner…plaintiffs claimed that Arizona’s audit regime is insufficient to negate these vulnerabilities and that the only way to overcome the security issues they identify is “for the Court to Order, an election conducted by paper ballot, as an alternative to the current framework.”’
Kari Lake ordered to pay sanctions for her BS lawsuit. https://t.co/vY8DqHEU23
— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) December 1, 2022
Hobbs and her attorneys pushed back against these claims, arguing that Lake and her attorneys brought a frivolous lawsuit to court, lying about the information and “proof” they claimed to have regarding this fraudulent election they claim to have been injured by.
‘Defendants argue that Plaintiffs and their counsel made numerous false allegations about Arizona elections in their FAC and MPI, that Plaintiffs’ claims are frivolous, and that they pursued this case for the improper purpose of undermining confidence in elections and furthering their political campaigns.’
Republican candidate for governor Kari Lake plans to sue Arizona’s largest county next week to overturn her election loss, sources familiar with the matter tell TIMEhttps://t.co/ji72sqR92L
— TIME (@TIME) December 1, 2022
There is one significant problem with Lake’s demands for the use of paper ballots in Arizona’s elections: they already do. US District Judge Tuchi, who oversaw the lawsuit, responded to the motion for sanctions brought by the Hobbs team, agreeing that their claims had not been proven and that the demands made the lawsuit frivolous. Lake and her team will have to reimburse the Hobbs team and the courts for costs incurred during the court proceedings.
‘On occasion attorneys engage in litigation tactics so vexatious as to be unjustifiable even within the broad bounds of our adversarial system, and . . . neither the other parties nor the courts should have to abide such behavior or waste time and money coping with it…a central component of Plaintiffs’ request for injunctive relief—requiring Arizona to use paper ballots—was entirely frivolous because Defendants are already doing what Plaintiffs want them to do.
GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who is projected by major media organizations to lose the Arizona governor's race, has filed a public records lawsuit demanding Maricopa County hand over a variety of documents related to the election. https://t.co/j3BGNYJAZI
— FOX 10 Phoenix (@FOX10Phoenix) November 25, 2022
