The 2 attorneys who represented
Kari Lake in her failed try and overturn the outcomes of Arizona’s
2022 gubernatorial election are being investigated by the State Bar of
Arizona. 

Bryan Blehm, a Scottsdale divorce
lawyer, and Kurt Olsen, an employment lawyer from Washington, D.C.,
have represented Lake in a number of court docket circumstances over the previous yr. In
these circumstances, Lake, a Republican, challenged the outcomes of the
gubernatorial race that she misplaced by greater than 17,000 votes to Democrat
Katie Hobbs.

The State Bar is within the strategy of
investigating two costs introduced towards Olsen and one cost geared toward
Blehm associated to their conduct within the election problem trials, State
Bar spokesperson Taylor Tasler advised the Arizona Mirror. 

No additional public info is
accessible in both of the circumstances, Tasler advised the Mirror, however the
investigations have the potential to result in each attorneys being
disbarred. 

However in Blehm’s response letter to the Bar investigation, which was shared on the social media web site X, he refers to a post he made accusing the chief justice of the Arizona Supreme Court docket of making a activity pressure to counter disinformation
in 2019 on the request of what he calls the “nationwide safety state”
in an effort to cease reliable election fraud circumstances following the 2020
election. 

Blehm, like Lake, claims with out proof that the presidency was stolen from Donald Trump in 2020.

The remainder of Blehm’s letter particulars a
listing of conspiracy theories that don’t all appear to immediately correlate to
the Lake election fraud case, together with his obvious perception that
COVID-19 was created purposefully in a lab. He goes on to declare that
tens of 1000’s of ballots solid within the 2020 election had signatures
that didn’t match the voter and says that the CIA had pressured the
State Supreme Court docket in an try and stamp out reliable election
challenges earlier than they start. 

He introduced no proof or citations for any of the claims.

“The lawfare being waged towards
conservative attorneys, particularly these concerned in election associated
regulation will quickly drain the bar associations of anybody prepared to lift
election challenges on behalf of conservative candidates,” Blehm wrote.
“There’ll quickly be a unibar the place there isn’t a dissent or opposite
opinion on points that matter, on this case our elections.”

Blehm didn’t instantly reply to a
request for remark and a quantity listed on a number of web sites for Olsen’s
regulation agency led to a receptionist who mentioned Olsen didn’t work there. 

A spokesman for Kari Lake, who’s now working for the U.S. Senate, didn’t reply to a request for remark. 

The Arizona Supreme Court docket has already sanctioned
Lake, Blehm and Olsen in Might for making false statements of their
election problem filings, ordering them to pay $2,000 for writing in
her enchantment that it was an “undisputed truth” that greater than 35,000
ballots had been illegally inserted into batches of authorized ballots in
Maricopa County when the November 2022 ballots had been being sorted shortly
after Election Day. 

“Typically campaigns and their
attendant hyperbole spill over into authorized challenges,” the court docket wrote
in its order. “However as soon as a contest enters the judicial enviornment, guidelines of
lawyer ethics apply.”

The court docket wrote that Lake offered no
proof that greater than 35,000 ballots had been illegally inserted into the
depend, and due to this fact sanctions had been warranted since Lake’s attorneys
knowingly “made false factual statements” within the lawsuit.

The claims that Blehm made in his
response letter had been harking back to these sorts of assertions he made in
court docket, a lot of which had been thrown out or failed because of lack of
proof. 

These failed claims included that
staff inside Maricopa County and its elections contractor Runbeck
someway deliberately modified the outcomes of the November 2022 election,
delivering a win to Hobbs and pulling a victory out from underneath Lake.
Blehm and Olsen saved altering their claims, as judges shot them down. 

In a second trial, they pivoted from
their claims of intentional fraud to the idea that Maricopa County
performed no signature verification on early ballots, an assertion that Lake’s personal witnesses refuted. 

“Each one among Plaintiff’s witnesses —
and for that matter, Defendants’ witnesses as properly — was requested about
any private information of each intentional misconduct and intentional
misconduct directed to influence the 2022 Basic Election,” the decide wrote in his determination.
“Each single witness earlier than the Court docket disclaimed any private
information of such misconduct. The Court docket can’t settle for hypothesis or
conjecture instead of clear and convincing proof.”

Blehm and Olsen fumbled their manner
by way of proceedings in entrance of judges within the trial and enchantment courts,
in addition to earlier than the Arizona Supreme Court docket, usually displaying ignorance
of normal court docket procedures and state regulation. 

Blehm and Olsen began out Lake’s preliminary election problem trial
in Maricopa County Superior Court docket in December 2022 with an admonishment
from Choose Peter Thompson for offering reveals that weren’t correctly
numbered, making a variety of work for Thompson’s clerk the evening earlier than
the trial. 

Later that day, Blehm tried to
name a witness who was not on the witness listing and mentioned that he had
offered proof to the protection after they claimed he had not. 

Issues didn’t change a lot throughout Lake’s second election problem trial
in Maricopa County Superior Court docket in Might, when Olsen referred to as an skilled
witness, requested solely in regards to the witness’s background, after which mentioned he had
no additional questions. 

He shortly tried to take that again,
saying he didn’t have extra questions for the witness at that exact
second, however wished to ask extra questions later. 

“You mentioned ‘no additional questions,’”
Thompson advised him, explaining to Olsen that, when an lawyer utters
that phrase, which means they’re completed questioning the witness. 

Legal professionals for defendants Hobbs, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and Maricopa County balked at Olsen’s lack of understanding. 

“It’s not my fault they don’t
perceive primary process,” Craig Morgan, the lawyer for the
Secretary of State’s Workplace, mentioned. “He ceded the witness to me, and now
it’s my flip to cross-examine or not. That’s how we do that, your
honor.” 

Olsen requested for Thompson’s indulgence in permitting him to proceed and the decide gave it, after admonishing Olsen. 

“I really feel like I’m educating a seminar up right here,” Thompson mentioned. 

Olsen was concerned within the Texas lawyer common’s failed try and overturn the outcomes of the 2020 election, and spoke to Trump a number of instances
on Jan. 6, 2021, the day of the U.S. Capitol revolt. Olsen was a
companion for round 18 years at Klafter, Olsen & Lesser, a New York
regulation agency he based, earlier than the agency distanced itself from him in 2021, altering its title to Klafter Lesser LLP and eradicating references to Olsen from its web site. 

In his letter responding to the State
Bar of Arizona allegations, Blehm additionally appeared to confess that he knew he
wasn’t as much as the job of taking up the Lake election problem case. 

“When attorneys concern elevating particular
points earlier than our courts as a result of they don’t need to make this
look, we implicitly deny people full entry to our judicial
system as discovering appropriate counsel might be troublesome if not inconceivable,”
Blehm wrote. “Kari Lake’s case ought to have been dealt with by a a lot bigger
regulation agency with sources. Slightly, she was left represented by a small
sole proprietor with few to no sources. The identical might be mentioned about Abe
Hamadeh.”