Failed Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake confessed that she knowingly lied about Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, but it's not that big of a deal.
According to the Arizona Mirror, Lake claimed it doesn't matter if she lied because she has a First Amendment right to do so. Richer is suing Lake for defaming him as part of her ongoing efforts to convince people she won the 2022 governor's race.
In a court filing, Lake's lawyers said Richer's suit should be dismissed because he works for the "state" and he only brought the suit to “deter, retaliate against, and prevent Defendants’ lawful exercise of their free speech rights on the core public issue of election integrity.”
"An Anti-SLAPP motion is not an attempt to adjudicate falsity, but to avoid the burden of having to justify statements concerning core political speech,” Lake said in the filing.
Richer filed the suit as a private individual, not through his county job, but because the suit is around his work there, Lake said he should be considered a "state actor."
SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation and are generally lawsuits used to protect speech, but The Mirror spoke to a Phoenix lawyer who said Lake is stretching the purpose of the spirit of the law.
“I think it’s a stretch to say that a public officer standing up for his or her reputation is doing so to stop someone from engaging in political speech,” lawyer Craig Morgan said.
“You could arguably read this as a desperate maneuver,” Morgan continued. “I don’t agree that this is the kind of situation that anti-SLAPP laws are meant to deter or remedy, I just don’t.”
Richer was one of the lawmakers who was frequently targeted by Lake in the aftermath of her race.
Among her false accusations is that Richer “intentionally printed 19-inch images on 20-inch ballots to sabotage the 2022 general election,” resulting in 300,000 “illegal, invalid, phony or bogus” early ballots being counted in Maricopa County. While she's made the comment on social media and publicly, she also cited it in one of her election lawsuits. Both the Maricopa County Superior Court, the Arizona Court of Appeals and the Arizona Supreme Court ruled there is no evidence to prove the claim.
"She has cast doubt on my loyalty to our country, our state and my office. She did this knowing that it would only throw gasoline on the fire of falsehoods about our elections," Richer wrote in an op-ed announcing his lawsuit. "Lake has not sent me into hiding. Nor will she ever. But her defamatory statements have irrevocably altered my life, closed opportunities and damaged relationships."
He explained that he believes firmly in free speech, so he isn't suing her based on her lies and personal hate.
"Instead, it’s about the instances where Lake and her campaign entities chose to violate defamation law by repeatedly making specific untruthful statements alleging that I had committed heinous crimes," Richer said.
Morgan thinks Lake's efforts to get the suit dismissed will fail.
