Science tells us that in about five billion years, the sun will morph into a red giant and engulf the earth. None of us will be here to blog about it, but you can be sure that even as flames envelop the planet, Kari Lake will still be litigating her latest election loss.
Yesterday Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter A. Thompson ruled that Kari Lake is not the governor of Arizona. AGAIN. This marks the eleventy-seventh courtroom loss for the Big Lyinest liar in the Grand Canyon state — yes, we assume there is an actual number of rounds where she’s got her ass handed to her in state or federal court, but tallying them is like trying to number the stars.
Lake filed the original complaint in December of 2022 alleging widespread voter fraud, including “injections” of votes for IRL Governor Katie Hobbs by the voting machine company Runbeck Election Services. Repeating this claim after it had been repeatedly debunked netted her attorneys Brian Blehm and Kurt Olsen a $2,000 sanction from the Arizona Supreme Court. Olsen makes frequent appearances in MAGA election challenges, including putting his name on the Texas suit to throw out all the swing state electors, suing the government over its seizure of Mike Lindell’s phone at a Hardees in Mankato, Minnesota, and getting himself sanctioned in a different Lake election challenge, along with Alan Dershowitz.
But the state’s high court did Lake one solid, overturning the trial judge’s dismissal of her case in its entirety and reviving a single count as to her claim that there had been no signature matching of the ballots. (The trial court ruled that it was time-barred, but the appeals court said that was technically incorrect, and remanded for a hearing on the evidence.)
Last week, the court held a three day trial on the issue. As usual, it went great for Team Lake.
As this tweet suggests, Lake had to modify her case a bit to reflect the reality that her star witnesses — or “whistleblowers” as she called them — were, in fact, tasked with verifying signatures in Maricopa County. In light of this inconvenient fact, Lake claimed that she’d actually been arguing all along that the procedures for signature verification were so perfunctory as to amount to a violation of Arizona law and deliberate misconduct, rendering the election result invalid.
But, as Judge Thompson noted in his opinion, Lake’s own witnesses undercut her claims:
First, Ms. Onigkeit’s testimony makes abundantly clear that level one and level two signature review did take place in some fashion. She expressed her concern that this review was done hastily and possibly not as thoroughly as she would have liked – but it was done. Mr. Myers’s testimony similarly revealed that he participated in both a level one review and curing process.
Testimony from the county’s witness that “the human element of signature review consisted of 153 level one reviewers, 43 level two reviewers, and two ongoing audits” didn’t help matters either. And neither did the lawyering by Blehm and Olsen, who managed to bollix the case both procedurally and by getting their own witnesses to confirm the falsity of their allegations. But over in MAGA world, they assured themselves that they were headed for a flawless victory.
In fact, they were not. The court ruled that the law does not impose a specific duration of time per signature verification, that the election official has discretion as to verification procedures, and that it would be a separation of powers for the court to read one into the statute.
“There is no statutory or regulatory requirement that a specific amount of time be applied to review any given signature at any level of review,” Judge Thompson wrote. “Giving all due weight to [Lake witness Erich] Speckin’s signature verification expertise, his analysis and preferred methodology is not law, and a violation of law is what Plaintiff was required to demonstrate.”
But do not despair! Because Kari Lake is promising a big announcement this afternoon at 1 p.m. local time to be carried live on her Rumble channel. No commie woke YouTube for our girl, nosirreebob!
Will she be announcing an appeal? (Yes.) Will she be declaring her candidacy for US Senate to challenge Ruben Gallego after he sends Kyrsten Sinema off to a lucrative career as a banking lobbyist? (Please, oh, please.) Will she cynically parrot the most deranged talking points from the wingnutosphere while telling scurrilous lies about the judge? (Bet on it.)
In summary and in conclusion, BITCH, PLEASE.
[Lake v. Hobbs, docket via Democracy Docket]
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