Kari Lake loses court battle to kill defamation lawsuit against her

Kari Lake will have to face a civil trial for defamation brought by a top county elections chief in Arizona, court records and reports show.

The Arizona Supreme Court has denied Lake's petition to review a lower court decision ordering the lawsuit brought by Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer to move forward against her, according to KPNX's Brahm Resnik.

Lake, a far-right former Phoenix news anchor who ran unsuccessfully for governor of Arizona in 2022 and is now mounting a campaign for Senate, was sued by Richer, himself a Republican, after she repeatedly claimed Richer helped rig the gubernatorial election against her.

She denies wrongdoing, arguing she was speaking hyperbolically and didn't intend to be taken literally.

Even before the 2022 election, Richer has detailed harassment he has received, including death threats, as a result of speaking out against conspiracy theories that the 2020 presidential election in Arizona was stolen.

This comes after Lake lost a series of other lawsuits seeking to get the 2022 election thrown out. She has to this day never conceded her loss to Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs.

It also comes amid another huge shakeup of the Arizona Senate race this week, with incumbent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat-turned-independent, announcing she will not seek re-election, averting a potential three-way race between herself, Lake, and the Democratic frontrunner, Congressman Ruben Gallego.