When far-right MAGA Republican and conspiracy theorist Kari Lake filed a lawsuit against Arizona Gov.-Elect Katie Hobbs after losing the state’s gubernatorial race to her, it didn’t come as a big surprise. Lake campaigned on the Big Lie, promoting the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. And she has falsely accused Arizona election officials of being crooked, including outgoing Secretary of State Hobbs.
University of Baltimore law professor Kimberly Wehle, a former federal prosecutor, examines Lake’s lawsuit in a biting article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on December 13. And Wehle lays out some reasons why she considers the lawsuit “garbage.”
“Kari Lake, the loser of the Arizona gubernatorial race, has filed suit in Arizona state court against Katie Hobbs, the governor-elect and current secretary of state, along with a slew of election officials, challenging the election outcome à la the Big Lie 2020,” Wehle explains. “Like Donald Trump before her, Lake is attempting to use the courts to create political soundbites to feed the base — despite an apparent absence of supportive facts or law.”
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Wehle continues, “So far, she isn’t getting much MAGA traction from a ploy that’s bespoke to Trump. Her legal case looks like a loser, too. We know this in part because Lake already tried a pre-election lawsuit, back in April.”
The lawsuit that Lake filed in April didn’t do well, and Wehle predicts that her post-election lawsuit against Hobbs probably won’t do well either.
“She asked a federal court to order that Arizona use only paper ballots in the November election, claiming that electronic machines are vulnerable to hacking,” Wehle notes. “Trouble is, Arizona doesn’t even use the kind of touch-screen system her lawsuit sought to decommission. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge John J. Tuchi sanctioned Lake’s lawyers — including former Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, of Trump impeachment fame — for filing their pre-election claims without having conducted ‘the factual and legal pre-filing inquiry that the circumstances of this case reasonably permitted and required.’ Tuchi ordered the lawyers to reimburse the other side for their attorneys’ fees spent defending the lawsuit.”
Wehle adds, “What the likes of Trump and Lake understand — and what evades non-lawyers — is that litigants can file any sort of garbage to initiate a lawsuit. There’s no automatic gatekeeper at the courthouse door banning bogus cases that have no basis in fact or law.”
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The law professor argues that both of Lake’s lawsuits — the one filed in April and the one filed against Hobbs and other Arizona officials — are politically motivated, not motivated by sound legal arguments.
“The political payoff is just too juicy for lawyers to be bothered by the off-chance possibility that a court will react to having been manipulated,” Wehle writes. “This round, Lake makes the sweeping claim that thousands of Arizonans voted illegally last month — a number that, in her estimate, ‘far exceeds’ the 17,117-vote margin that handed Hobbs the win. Lake adds that the widely reported tabulator and printer problems experienced on Election Day ‘set off a domino chain of electoral improprieties, rampant administrative chaos and confusion…. and ultimately, the prevention of qualified voters from having their votes counted.”
Wehle wraps up her piece by stressing that Lake doesn’t care whether or not her lawsuit has legal merit as long as it might benefit her politically.
“The fact that there is frivolousness afoot here doesn’t mean getting rid of these claims will be swift or costless,” Wehle observes. “Precisely because some of Lake’s assertions are so head-scratching, the defendants will have to conduct careful research and draft motions that do the job of both sides — that is, give Lake the benefit of every doubt and then defeat that strawman, thus enabling the judge to have confidence in ruling, presumably, against her. Given how high political emotions ran after 2020, with physical threats against election officials at record highs, this process is no joke. Like countless other politicians in the Republican Party, Lake doesn’t care.”
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