After spending more than a year trying to undo her 2022 election defeat, Kari Lake appears to be abandoning those efforts, which have cost her millions of dollars in legal expenses and have gotten her absolutely nowhere.
Since losing the 2022 election to Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, by over 17,000 votes, the drag-hating MAGA queen has filed over half a dozen more lawsuits, each one claiming that the election was rigged, hijacked, stolen, miscounted, mishandled, blah, blah, blah.
She’s lost every case and appeal, with numerous judges ruling there was no legal basis to her arguments and/or no evidence to support her allegations.
Politics, but make it gay!
Stay woke with our daily briefing while staying informed on all things LGBTQ+ entertainment, life, and more!
In a court filing yesterday, her lawyer, Bryan Blehm, quietly withdrew a notice that said Lake intended to appeal a November ruling from Maricopa County Superior Court Judge John Hannah that rejected her claims that she was entitled to review ballot envelopes.
Not only did Hannah rule against her, he scolded her for trying to gain access to voter signatures and phone numbers, which he said is private information.
“The broad right of electoral participation outweighs the narrow interests of those who would continue to pick at the machinery of democracy,” he wrote in his ruling.
“Ms. Lake regards the electoral process much like villagers in the famous fable regarding the goose that laid the golden eggs, except that her goose failed to lay the egg she expected,” he chided.
Blehm gave no explanation for withdrawing the notice to appeal this week, which effectively ends Lake’s futile legal fight, but it comes just two weeks after she went on a local a Arizona radio station and admitted she has no idea who actually stole the 2022 election from her.
“I don’t know who exactly stole the election,” she confessed, before quickly adding, “But there are a lot of people who are running elections poorly, and we’ve seen the results.”
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer does not suffer fools.
While this chapter may now be closed, Lake’s legal woes are far from over. She’s still being sued for defamation by Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer after falsely accusing him of being a criminal.
He filed the lawsuit last year after she wouldn’t quit saying he “sabotaged” electronic ballot printers by inserting 300,000 fake ballots into the Maricopa County ballot counter, thus costing her the governorship.
In reality, Richer, a Republican, didn’t do anything wrong. Lake simply lost the election. But as a result of her endless lies about him, he’s faced months of online harassment.
“She’s allowed to insult me, criticize my abilities, criticize my hair,” he told reporters. “She is not allowed to say that I did something that was criminally unlawful, something that has been adjudicated by multiple courts as absolutely, positively not happening.”
Lake has tried twice to get Richer’s defamation case dismissed. Both times she has failed. Just last month, a judge has ruled her claims about him could be proved false to a jury and greenlit the case for trial, although no date has been set just yet.
Speaking to Real America’s Voice last month, she talked about her personal legal troubles and implied Richer and others were trying to shut down her current bid for U.S. Senate by filing lawsuits against her.
“I wish I could sit here and tell you everything’s fine and dandy,” Lake said. “It’s not. But I do know this, they’re trying to bring down President Trump. They’re trying to sue me into oblivion for speaking about elections.”
In reality, Richer is simply holding her accountable for continuing to lie about him, which has resulted in him receiving death threats.
Lake is currently running for U.S. Senate in Arizona against pro-LGBTQ+ Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, who has been outraising her by millions of dollars. Meanwhile, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an independent, has yet to announce whether she’ll seek another term in office.
A recent batch of polls from Emerson College found Lake six points behind Gallego. Meanwhile, Sinema is trailing Lake by 10 points and Gallego by 15 points. The bisexual incumbent senator has until April 1 to register for reelection but has remained tight-lipped about her plans.
