Kari Lake and her legal professionals repeatedly
lied to the court docket and misrepresented proof throughout her election
problem trial final week and must be sanctioned for it, attorneys for
Maricopa County wrote in a Tuesday submitting.
“The misstatements of truth from Lake and her counsel usually are not a sequence of mere accidents or zealous
advocacy; they characterize a decided program of misinformation,”
Deputy Maricopa County Lawyer Tom Liddy wrote within the submitting.
“Lake and her counsel have completely
no excuse for providing these falsehoods in Courtroom and will face
sanctions from this Courtroom,” he added.
Maricopa County Superior Courtroom Decide Peter Thompson dominated in opposition to Lake
on Might 22, saying she did not show throughout a three-day trial final
week that Maricopa County ignored state legislation and carried out no signature
verification for early ballots throughout the 2022 basic election.
In his ruling, Thompson affirmed that Democrat Katie Hobbs, who beat Lake by 17,000 votes, is the governor of Arizona.
Liddy identified within the county’s
request for sanctions that Lake and her legal professionals, D.C. employment
legal professional Kurt Olsen and Scottsdale divorce lawyer Bryan Blehm, had been just lately sanctioned by the Arizona Supreme Courtroom for making false statements to that court docket.
“Moral events would have been
suitably admonished by each the Supreme Courtroom’s assertion that they made
‘unequivocally false’ statements to the Courtroom and the financial sanction
that the Supreme Courtroom consequently issued,” Liddy wrote. “However Lake and
her counsel weren’t deterred. As an alternative, they had been inexplicably
emboldened.”
Final week’s trial was Lake’s second in Thompson’s courtroom. She misplaced the primary trial in December and appealed to the Arizona Supreme Courtroom, which despatched one in every of her 10 preliminary claims again to Thompson for additional examination and upheld the dismissal of the opposite 9.
Lake’s declare that Maricopa County
performed no signature verification was “completely frivolous,” Liddy
wrote, and her attorneys had been utterly conscious of that, particularly since
two of her witnesses testified that they participated in signature verification for the county.
“This testimony — recognized by Lake and
her counsel earlier than trial and provided to substantiate her signature
verification declare — conclusively defeated Lake’s spurious assertion
that signature verification didn’t happen,” Liddy wrote. “Lake and her
counsel can’t now argue that they thought her declare stood any probability of
success when her personal truth witnesses would testify that signature
verification did, in truth, happen.”
Through the trial, Olsen and Blehm
tried to show that, as a result of their professional claimed election staff
for the county permitted 274,000 poll signatures in 3 seconds or fewer
and 70,000 signatures in 2 seconds or fewer, the required signature
verification didn’t really occur. However the decide wasn’t shopping for that
argument, saying that Arizona legislation doesn’t specify an period of time a
employee should spend reviewing a signature.
Liddy additionally known as out Olsen for
claiming throughout closing arguments that the election was rigged in opposition to
Lake, with out offering a shred of proof for his declare.
“Lake not solely did not show that
the election was rigged by a transparent and convincing proof normal, however
additionally she didn’t hassle making an attempt to show the election was ‘rigged’
at trial,” Liddy wrote. “She didn’t even ask a single witness any
query that would have elicited proof that the election was
rigged.”
Since she misplaced the gubernatorial race
six months in the past, Lake has repeatedly claimed that she is the true
governor and that the election was rigged in opposition to her, however thus far not one of the courts have discovered her supposed proof of this assertion compelling.
“Lake’s counsel engaged in a blatant
effort to deceive the Courtroom when he mentioned that the election was
‘rigged,’” Liddy wrote. “Blatantly false statements like this could
immediate a robust retributive response from the Courtroom.”
Maricopa County requested that the court docket
financially sanction Lake and her attorneys in an quantity that the court docket
decided was acceptable. Additionally they are looking for for his or her attorneys’
charges to be paid by Lake and her attorneys along with the sanctions.
The opposite defendants within the case, Hobbs and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, haven’t but requested sanctions.
In their response,
Lake and her staff urged that each one events within the case pay their very own
attorneys’ charges and mentioned that county and different defendants within the case
weren’t owed reimbursement of their charges as a result of they didn’t ask for
particular quantities by the court docket’s deadline.
Throughout a Tuesday press convention
throughout which she railed in opposition to the media and made the “large
announcement” that she was beginning a poll chasing program, Lake mentioned she deliberate to enchantment her second trial loss. She didn’t provide any particulars on that plan.