'Maybe it would have worked in fantasyland': AZ columnist buries Kari Lake over lawsuit flop

The Arizona Republic columnist Laurie Roberts showed no mercy to former newscaster Kari Lake over her belief that a key part of proving that the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election was stolen from her fell flat in a courtroom on Thursday.

According to Lake who has been floating conspiracies of election shenanigans long before she lost to new Gov. Katie Hobbs (D), she felt her attorneys and "experts" were in possession of a "bombshell" that would make people sit up and pay attention.

As Roberts notes, that bombshell "wasn’t even a small firecracker. Not even a party popper."

Writing "Kari Lake’s trial is over," the longtime columnist said the assertion that "somebody shrunk the ballots to cause Election Day mayhem" failed to pan out.

"Scott Jarrett, the county’s co-elections director, testified on Thursday that temporary technicians dispatched on Election Day to troubleshoot problems in three vote centers accidentally set the printers to shrink-to-fit, causing the vote center tabulators to reject them," Robert wrote before adding, "What he described was a snafu, not a scheme."

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She continued, "But Lake’s expert, Clay Parikh, said those 19-inch ballots turned up in ballots he inspected earlier this week from all six vote centers and thus it “could not be by accident," which the columnist mocked as "Ipso facto, a conspiracy-o."

Continuing in that vein, she wrote, "Who knows? Maybe it would have worked in fantasyland. But here in Maricopa County, there are those bipartisan boards that make sure such ballots count. So even if there was a plot (doubtful), it was foiled when those votes were ultimately counted."

According to the columnist, it's time for judges to put a stop to her running to the courts with nothing and wasting their time.

With Lake telling reporters afterward, "We proved without a shadow of a doubt that there was malicious intent that caused disruptions so great it changed the results of the election," Roberts said not so fast.

"Something was proved without a shadow of doubt, all right. And it should be followed up with sanctions, as a warning to candidates that they’d better come to court armed with something more than sour grapes if they want to overturn the results of an election. If Lake had proof of a county plot to deny her her due, it certainly wasn’t offered up this week," she wote before concluding, "Opinion, speculation and outright wishful thinking? Yeah. But actual evidence in a courtroom? No."

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