AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin
Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors members, and Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake were all summoned to appear in court by the judge presiding over Lake’s electoral complaint.
“The Court has reviewed Plaintiffs’ Verified Statement of Election Contest filed December 9, 2022. Because this matter is an election challenge, the return hearing will be set on an accelerated basis,” Judge Peter Thompson wrote in his order.
Earlier this month, Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge John Tuchi sanctioned Lake and her lawyers for filing what he claimed was a frivolous, partisan lawsuit, prompting a harsh rebuke from Lake. This new order from Judge Thomspon appears to take the matter more seriously. Thompson was appointed to the bench in September 2010 by former Gov. Jan Brewer.
The previous two elections in Maricopa County, Ariz., have been controversial for how poorly they were conducted. Last year, a forensic audit of the presidential election found thousands of discrepancies in the county. On Election Day this year, many Republicans were expected to vote for Kari Lake. But in the districts where most Republicans were expected to cast their ballots, technical problems prevented thousands of individuals from voting.
Lake’s lawsuit is driven by whistleblowers who have come forward with complaints about how the 2022 elections were conducted.
“We’ve had three whistleblowers from Maricopa County reach out and say the system is seriously flawed,” Lake told Just the News on Monday. “They were throwing out tens of thousands of signatures saying they were scribbles that in no way matched. But somewhere between there, the ballots were being completely tossed out and they got looped back into the system and counted as if they were fine.”
Lake also noted that 25,000 “additional ballots and early voting ballots were discovered two days after Election Day.”
They “just showed up,” she observed. “It shows the whole system has serious problems.”
“We believe that up to 135,000 ballots were pushed through that should not have been pushed through,” Lake continued. “We’re asking a judge to let us take a look at all of the envelopes and compare signatures, so that we can find out for sure how many bad, fraudulent ballots got through in that way, of basically cheating or breaking the rules.”
Lake issued the following statement at the conclusion of today’s hearing:
Lake has promised to fight this battle aggressively and “take it all the way to the Supreme Court” if necessary.
