Arizona judge sets evidentiary hearing in Kari Lake v. Katie Hobbs case for next week

Published in Blog on December 14, 2022 by Brianna Kraemer

After gubernatorial GOP candidate Kari Lake filed a lawsuit challenging the outcome of the Arizona election, a judge called for an emergency hearing Tuesday morning that resulted in the case moving forward.

The Tuesday hearing was set on an accelerated basis by Judge Peter Thompson because of its relevance to the election. While Lake appeared in the virtual hearing with representatives, Hobbs and other Maricopa County officials did not attend the meeting but rather had representatives in their place.

The judge determined more evidence necessary, and set an evidentiary hearing in Lake v. Hobbs – and several other Maricopa County officials – for Dec. 21 and 22. This means both sides will be expected to provide evidence under oath.

Hobbs' side will attempt to dismiss the entire case, which requires another hearing set for Monday. If the judge does not grant the motion to dismiss, then the evidentiary hearing will proceed as scheduled next Wednesday and Thursday.

"Today’s hearing regarding my lawsuit was telling. The Judge noted the volume of evidence my team compiled. The defendants’ team seemed desperate to sweep it under the rug," Lake said. "I am thankful to Judge Peter Thompson and his team for the work they do and we are confident that given the opportunity, we will expose this election for the sham it was."

In Lake's filed election complaint filled with evidence, she asserts that due to "intentional" election-day anomalies, voters were disenfranchised and suppressed. She calls for a forensic audit of the printer issues and an inspection of ballot and voter registration records.

"Our sacred vote was trampled on. Every Arizonan should be furious, regardless of Party. Despite the desperate lies by the Fake News, my team has filed one of the strongest Election Lawsuits in history," Lake said in a statement.

https://conventionofstates.com/news/arizona-judge-sets-evidentiary-hearing-in-kari-lake-v-katie-hobbs-case-for-next-week

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Arizona judge sets evidentiary hearing in Kari Lake v. Katie Hobbs case for next week

Adobe Docs

https://www.democracydocket.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/CV2022095403-Order-to-App-1.pdf

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Judge Holds Emergency Court Hearing over Election Lawsuit, Calls for Kari Lake and Katie Hobbs to Appear

December 14, 2022 Neil Jones

UPDATE: Kari Lake provided this statement to The Arizona Sun Times Tuesday afternoon:

Today’s hearing regarding my lawsuit was telling. The Judge noted the volume of evidence my team compiled. The defendants’ team seemed desperate to sweep it under the rug.

I am thankful to Judge Peter Thompson and his team for the work they do and we are confident that given the opportunity, we will expose this election for the sham it was.

Arizona Judge Peter Thompson issued an order Tuesday for Arizona Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake and Governor-elect Katie Hobbs to appear in court regarding the election lawsuit filed by Lake.

“The Court has reviewed Plaintiffs’ Verified Statement of Election Contest filed December 9, 2022. Because this matter is an election challenge, the return hearing will be set on an accelerated basis,” according to Thompson.

Aside from Lake and Hobbs, Maricopa Count Stephen Richer, Board of Supervisor members Bill Gates, Clint Hickman, Jack Sellers, Thomas Galvin, and Steve Gallardo, and Director of Elections Scott Jarrett were also called to appear. The order stated that the appearance would be held over a video conference at 11 am on Tuesday. The hearing was not for arguing the case but for setting up the logistics of the case moving forward.

The Arizona Sun Times reached out to the Lake campaign for a comment but did not receive a response before publishing time.

Although the hearing was not able to start right at 11 due to technical errors and heavy online traffic, the livestream was able to begin before the noon hour.

Lake appeared in the virtual court alongside her representatives, although Hobbs and the other Maricopa County officials did not make an appearance, only having representatives in their place.

Andy Gaona, representing Hobbs, declared the intentions on behalf of the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office to dismiss this case by Thursday. Oral arguments are set for Monday, and an evidentiary hearing is set for December 21st and 22nd.

As reported by The Sun Times, Lake’s 70-page complaint contests the results of the 2022 General Election because voters were disenfranchised and suppressed due to “intentional” election day anomalies.

The complaint also alleges hundreds of thousands of vote-by-mail ballots deposited into drop boxes or returned through the United States Postal Service (USPS) and delivered to a third-party vendor, Runbeck Election Services, on election day. The issue was that chain of custody forms required to document the handling of these ballots were nonexistent, according to the complaint.

Lake ultimately calls for a forensic audit of the printer issues, an inspection of ballot and voter registration records, disqualification of illegal votes, and redoing the election.

“This lawsuit puts an end to any doubt that our elections, especially in Maricopa County, are rigged and massive reforms are needed if the public is ever to trust the results again.” Lake said in a statement shared with reporters, “Our sacred vote was trampled on. Every Arizonan should be furious, regardless of Party. Despite the desperate lies by the Fake News, my team has filed one of the strongest Election Lawsuits in history.”

https://tennesseestar.com/2022/12/14/judge-holds-emergency-court-hearing-over-election-lawsuit-calls-for-kari-lake-and-katie-hobbs-to-appear/

https://twitter.com/KariLake/status/1602731901726478336

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Kari Lake Files Lawsuit Loaded with Evidence Contesting Election Results

December 10, 2022 Rachel Alexander

Two weeks after filing a complaint requesting data from the 2022 midterm election in Maricopa County, gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake has filed another lawsuit against election officials contesting the election results, alleging voter disenfranchisement and suppression. Lake called for a forensic audit of the printer-tabulator problems, an inspection of ballots and voter registration records, including signatures, disqualification of illegal votes, and redoing the election as well as other relief.

Kurt Olsen, one of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit, told The Arizona Sun Times he believes the election anomalies were “intentional since they didn’t test all of their equipment and follow the appropriate processes when problems arose.” He asked, “Why haven’t they done their own forensic audit 30 days later?”

He said Maricopa County officials’ cavalier attitude about the problems and their lack of trying to find out what happened is telling. “Does anybody believe this widespread failure, oh shucks, just happened?” he wondered.

The complaint alleged that the number of illegal votes cast in the election “far exceeds the 17,117 vote margin” between the two candidates, a difference of .67 percent. It said Democrat Katie Hobbs did not receive the highest number of votes due to illegal votes.

Clay Parikh, a cyber expert who has extensive experience performing security tests on voting systems, including the type used in Maricopa County, stated that due to the lack of certification of some of the voting systems, the numerous procedural violations, the widespread failure of the tabulation process, the failure to provide proper instructions to handle the problem after it started, and the incorrect explanations given to the public, the election failures “can only be described as intentional.”

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https://arizonasuntimes.com/2022/12/10/kari-lake-files-lawsuit-loaded-with-evidence-contesting-election-results/

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The complaint alleged that “tens of thousands of mail-in and drop box ballots” did not satisfy signature requirements. Three Maricopa County signature verification employees signed affidavits stating that they rejected signatures as mismatching up to 40 percent of the time. However, when they showed up for work the next day, they would see only about 10 percent of those ballots reappear for signature curing. One of the reviewers believes a manager was approving the mismatched ballots instead.

The complaint cited a previous report by Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, which found that the early ballot signature verification used by Maricopa County “may be insufficient to guard against abuse.” An analysis found that bad signatures were rejected 14 times more often during the August primary Election in Maricopa County than during the 2020 General Election.

The lawsuit alleged that between 15,603 and 29,257 Republicans were disenfranchised who would have voted for Lake, according to a calculation performed by data analyst Richard Baris of Big Data Poll who surveyed voters about whether they experienced problems on Election Day. Due to the extremely high numbers of Republicans voting in person on election day, those votes were expected to fall 70 percent to Lake, 30 percent to Hobbs.

The complaint stated that 132 of the county’s 223 vote centers, or 59 percent, were affected, far more than the 70 acknowledged by county officials. It went over county election officials minimizing the problem, refusing to acknowledge the full extent of it, such as the long lines or how long it continued into the day, and provided affidavits from voters regarding how long they waited in line. It cited testimony regarding numerous voters who left without voting. The lawsuit also cited commingling the misread ballots, known as “Door 3” ballots, with tabulated ballots.

The complaint stated that “hundreds of thousands” of mail-in ballots lacked a chain of custody. It said over 298,942 ballots delivered to third-party signature verification service Runbeck on Election Day lacked a chain of custody, a class 2 misdemeanor. A Runbeck employee and other observers provided affidavits regarding witnessing this. The Runbeck employee also stated there were at least 9,530 duplicate ballots printed and issued with no chain of custody. Two days after the election, 25,000 more ballots were found which lacked a chain of custody.

The lawsuit cited an investigation into the 2020 election conducted by We the People AZ Alliance (WPAA), which found many incidents where Arizonans discovered they had been registered to vote or their voter registration had been changed, unbeknownst to them. WPAA reviewed 12.12 percent of the signatures on ballot envelopes in the Maricopa County 2020 election and found that 18,022 were clearly mismatches, and 19,631 failed the Arizona Secretary of State’s standards. This translated to 156,000 likely mismatches countywide and 165,600 failing the standards, yet the county only rejected 587 ballots for mismatched signatures. WPAA discovered that thousands of those same voters voted again in the 2022 election.

The complaint cited free speech violations, pointing to an information-sharing program that Hobbs, Maricopa County Election officials and Richer participated in to provide information to the Election Misinformation Reporting Portal created by the Department of Homeland Security and the Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency. It showed how Hobbs and other officials got election information censored on Twitter and other social media platforms.

The complaint cited a recent Rasmussen Reports poll which found that 72 percent of voters don’t trust Arizona’s election results.

Olsen told The Sun Times that although it’s impossible to trace back the ballots to the voters at this stage, it’s not required by the law to show that the unlawful votes would have gone to a particular candidate.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson has been assigned to the case. The exhibits to the lawsuit will be available soon at SaveArizonaFund.com, Lake’s team said.

If the inauguration of Hobbs takes place, a court can still change the results, as took place in 1916 in a disputed gubernatorial election. Abe Hamadeh, the Republican candidate for Attorney General who trailed his opponent Kris Mayes by 511 votes, filed a lawsuit on Friday, as did Mark Finchem, the Republican candidate for Secretary of State who trailed his opponent Adrian Fontes by 120,208 votes.

https://arizonasuntimes.com/2022/12/10/kari-lake-files-lawsuit-loaded-with-evidence-contesting-election-results/