Trump-backed Arizona governor candidate appears with Nazi sympathizer at campaign event: report

On Thursday, CNN's KFILE reported that Kari Lake, a former news anchor running for governor of Arizona with former President Donald Trump's endorsement, publicly posed with and thanked a Nazi sympathizer who attended her campaign events.

"At a campaign event in late August, Lake posed for a photo and video with far-right personalities Ethan Schmidt-Crockett, the founder of the AntiMaskersClub, who harassed a store specializing in wigs for cancer patients this summer because it required customers to wear masks, and Greyson Arnold, a Nazi sympathizer who has a history of making White nationalist, racist, antisemitic and pro-Nazi statements, including once calling Adolf Hitler 'a complicated historical figure which many people misunderstand,'" reported Em Steck and Andrew Kaczynski.

"'Anti-maskers club here with Kari Lake,' said Schmidt-Crockett alongside Lake and Arnold in the video. 'America First,' they each said," continued the report. "After Arnold posted a photo of the trio on Twitter, Lake replied, 'It was a pleasure to meet you, too.'"

According to recent reports, Lake, who has promoted election fraud conspiracy theories and called for the Arizona secretary of state to be arrested, has also palled around with prominent figures in the QAnon conspiracy theory movement, which posits that Trump is trying to bring down a shadowy cabal of child-trafficking Satanic pedophiles. She has had dinner with Ron Watkins, a top QAnon promoter who has even been accused of being the shadowy anonymous "Q" who originated the movement — although he denies this.

Lake has said that journalists "should be ashamed" of themselves for covering her association with QAnon figures.