“Patriots don’t back down to tyrants,” declared Kari Lake in a recent post on her Twitter account, vowing to see her legal challenges to Arizona’s November 8 midterm election through. The rising Republican gubernatorial candidate, despite major setbacks in her lawsuit shining light on the marred voting operations in Maricopa County and being recently hit with potential sanctions and fees upward of $500,000 by her Democratic opponent Katie Hobbs and Maricopa County officials, refuses to give up.
On Monday, following Judge Peter Thompson’s Christmas Eve decision to dismiss Lake’s lawsuit contesting the results of the Arizona governor’s race, Hobbs and the Maricopa County attorney filed motions seeking half a million dollars in attorney fees from Ms. Lake and her attorneys.
Lake’s lawyers Bryan Blehm and Kurt Olsen responded, claiming the motions had “no grounding in law or fact.” The response read in part:
At issue here is whether or not counsel for Plaintiff Kari Lake should be sanctioned for bringing claims that Defendants argue are not only without substantial justification but were also brought in bad faith and constitute harassment.
Though this Court found for Defendants on the issue of whether Plaintiff had shown clear and convincing evidence of Defendants’ “intentional misconduct,” neither the Court’s findings nor the record support Defendants’ motion for sanctions. In fact, Arizona law and the record at trial reflect that Defendants’ Motion for sanctions has no basis whatsoever.
Moreover, the issues raised before this Court were of significant concern to millions of Arizona voters as to the causes of chaos that arose on Election Day—and the administration of elections in Maricopa County generally—and Plaintiff’s claims deserved to be brought and heard….
The Complaint unequivocally identified specific numbers of illegal votes that far exceeded the 17,117 vote margin between Plaintiff Kari Lake and Secretary of State Katie Hobbs.
Judge Thompson rejected Hobbs’ request, ruling on Tuesday that Lake’s claims in the lawsuit were not “groundless.”
“The fact that plaintiff (Lake) failed to meet the burden of clear and convincing evidence … does not equate to a finding that her claims were, or were not, groundless and presented in bad faith,” Thompson wrote in the judgment.
However, Lake may be ordered to pay $33,000 to compensate witnesses for the defense who testified against her claims. As Fox News reported today, “Lake filed a notice of appeal after Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson ordered her to compensate expert witnesses that defended election officials against Lake’s claims. Hobbs won the election by about 17,000 votes and had sought additional sanctions against her defeated Republican opponent, but the judge rejected her request.”
“There is no doubt that each side believes firmly in its position with great conviction,” Thompson wrote in his ruling dismissing the sanctions and partial fees against Lake.
Thompson’s ruling to reject Lake’s lawsuit came after a fast-paced, two-day evidentiary trial in which Lake’s lawyers had the opportunity to prove the disenfranchisement of voters owing to an unprecedented number of broken tabulators (over 50 percent in Maricopa County alone), as well as ballot chain-of-custody violations.
Despite hundreds of sworn affidavits testifying to the confusion and illegality of Election Day operations, Thompson ruled that no “clear and convincing” evidence was presented to prove the issues impacted the outcome.
Notably, Maricopa County Elections co-Director Scott Jarrett admitted in court that ballot images had been shrunken to a 19-inch image printed on 20-inch paper, and that this anomaly, which affected printer readings of the ballots, was discovered shortly after the election. Jarrett testified that the shrink-to-fit issue had arisen in three prior elections.
In response, Lake’s attorney Kurt Olsen called out that if it had occurred in prior elections it made no sense to be analyzing it now. “Why are we doing a root cause analysis now if the modification had arisen in three prior elections? It doesn’t make sense,” he said in his closing arguments. “The other thing that doesn’t make sense, on this shrink to fit argument, are random techs doing things on their own.”
Lake has indicated she will take her case all the way to the Supreme Court, saying in a statement following the close of her trial: “I’m fighting for the people of Arizona, but not just for the people of Arizona. I’m fighting for the people of this country and for our future. If we don’t have honest elections, where we decide who represents us, then we don’t have a country anymore.”
