The Southwestern U.S. publication The Arizona Republic has publicized details of decisions from a judge there that send forward a lawsuit accusing infamous Arizona Republican Kari Lake of defamation. The case is from Stephen Richer, a locally elected official in Arizona’s Maricopa County, a jurisdiction around which Lake and others have raised never proven claims of systematic misconduct in elections.
By a narrow margin, Lake lost a race for governor in Arizona last year. She is now running for Senate, though she’d have to win a GOP primary pitting her against Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb to appear on ballots next November. Though she had already aligned herself with former President Donald Trump, Lake in the time since her 2022 election loss has extensively misrepresented the factual record of what transpired, arguing in court for an increasing amount of time after its conclusion for a redo of at least portions. One point of contention was the handling of polling place machines that printed ballots for county voters in 2022, but no intentional misconduct — or anything that could have changed the outcome — has ever been conclusively shown.
Lake challenged the lawsuit from Richer on the basis of Arizona protections against litigation that threatens free speech rights. Judge Jay Adleman concluded that Lake’s statements against Richer, as alleged, fell outside those protections. “The court is satisfied that the disputed statements — if indeed they are ‘provable’ as false or defamatory — would be undeserving of the protections associated with our First Amendment principles,” the judge said, per that Arizona publication. The Republic obtained a copy of a ruling from Adleman before it was made publicly available through regular means.
Richer said he and his family have been threatened in connection with the lies about Arizona’s elections in 2022, a problem to which others implicated in false claims of fraud from Trump’s circles have pointed. Elsewhere, ex-President Trump also failed in trying to use free speech claims to get a criminal case against him from Special Counsel Jack Smith thrown out. The case deals with Trump’s attempts to stay in power after 2020 despite losing the election. Proceedings at the District Court level are, however, largely on hold while Trump argues elsewhere he has wide-ranging legal protections by virtue of his time in office that should stop the case.
Image: Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons
