Kari Lake Handed Legal Blow by Judge

Kari Lake suffered a fresh legal blow on Wednesday when a Maricopa County judge refused to throw out a defamation lawsuit brought against the Arizona Republican by an election official whom she accused of involvement in a plot to rig the state's November 2022 gubernatorial election against her.

The case was brought by Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a fellow registered Republican, whom Lake accused of "intentionally printing misconfigured ballots" and inserting "300,000 illegal ballots" in an effort to thwart her campaign. Lake, a passionate Donald Trump supporter, failed to produce substantive evidence to support either claim.

In November 2022, Lake was narrowly defeated by Democrat Katie Hobbs in the Arizona gubernatorial contest. However she refused to concede, instead alleging the election was stolen by fraud, though her claim has been rejected repeatedly in the courts.

Lake targeted Richer as part of her election fraud theory, accusing the official of "printed a 19-inch image, the wrong image on the ballot, so that the tabulators would jam" on Election Day. She also claimed "300,000 illegal ballots" were counted despite lacking the necessary "chain of custody" that ensures only legitimate ballots are counted.

In response, Richer launched a lawsuit against Lake that Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Jay Adleman allowed to proceed on Wednesday, concluding he had made "actionable defamation claims" under Arizona state law that could be assessed as "either true or false."

In his ruling, Adleman said Lake "announce[d] objective facts pertaining to the size of the ballots and the intentional conduct" which could fall into the "category of statement[s] to be 'provably false' under the standards established by Arizona law."

Adleman also rejected the arguments from Lake's legal team that the case had been "brought for an improper purpose" and that her comments were merely expressions of "imaginative expression or rhetorical hyperbole."

He said: "The alleged statements in this case cannot be classified merely as 'descriptive' language. In point of fact, Defendant Lake's statements regarding improper 19-inch ballots and/or the existence of 300,000 fraudulent ballots may be discerned by a factfinder as either true or false when considered in the light of any available evidence."

Lake responded angrily to the ruling on X, formerly Twitter, where she repeated her call for the case to be thrown out.

The Republican firebrand said: "An elected government official is suing me for revealing the corruption in the elections he administered. He has a bunch of Soros-backed attorneys representing him. This is about taking away our First Amendment rights and interfering in the US Senate race. This case should have been tossed out of court."

Soros, who is Jewish, has become a favored target of conspiracy theorists, including many associated with the political far right.

Newsweek has reached out to Lake's team by email for comment.

In October Lake announced her candidacy for a Senate seat, saying: "I'm really tired of watching our politicians retreat from every single important battle. They're cowards. That's how we got into the mess we're in right now because they have surrendered far too many hills."

The move could set up a three-way battle against incumbent Senator Kyrsten Sinema, an independent and former Democrat, and the Democratic Party's candidate. Sinema has yet to confirm whether she will seek reelection in November 2024.