Maricopa County officials and the Arizona Secretary of State's Office were seeking sanctions against GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake's election denial lawsuit, just two days after a county judge ruled to dismiss the latter's case.
They are seeking sanctions against Lake and her attorneys for what they are calling a frivolous lawsuit. Maricopa County Superior Judge Peter Thompson, over the weekend, ruled that there was no clear evidence of misconduct by the county that Lake had allegedly affected the result of the 2022 general elections.
Arizona Election Denial Case
Lake's lawyers focused on issues with ballot printers at some polling places in Maricopa County to build their case. The county is home to more than 60% of Arizona's voters. The issue was that defective printers produced ballots that were too light to be read by the on-site tabulators at polling places.
Due to this, lines backed up in some areas amid the confusion, and Lake's attorneys also claimed that the chain of custody for ballots was broken at an off-site facility, where a contractor scans mail ballots to prepare them for processing, as per AZFamily.
After the ruling, the judge ordered that sanctions documents were due on Monday morning by 8:00 a.m. Maricopa County Superior Court records revealed a motion seeking sanctions was filed a few minutes before the deadline. One motion requested roughly $37,000 in attorney fees for Hobbs and the county.
The motion said that it was past the time to end unfounded attacks on elections and the expression of unwarranted accusations against elected officials. It added that the matter was brought without any legitimate justification, let alone a substantial one.
According to Fox News, the lawsuit comes as Hobbs was announced as the winner of the gubernatorial race in Arizona only a few days ago. Hobbs hired Coppersmith Brockelman PLC attorney Andrew Gaona, who has been working with the firm for 12 years, to represent her during an expedited election proceeding.
Kari Lake's Lawsuit
The attorneys were required to draft a motion to dismiss, prepare for an evidentiary hearing, and participate in the two-day evidentiary hearing. The fees, when broken down, are 94.3 hours worked by CB, totaling $31,090 plus an additional $5,900 for services retained from expert witness Ryan Macias.
Maricopa County attorneys argued that enough was enough as lawyers noted that Lake made public statements pledging to only accept the results of the 2020 general election if she won. They argued that the "entire purpose" of her failed lawsuit was to "plant baseless seeds of doubt in the electorate's mind about the integrity and security of the 2022 General Election in Maricopa County."
The lawyers added that it was one thing to do so on TV or social media sites but was an entirely different thing to attempt to use the imprimatur of the courts to try and achieve that goal. They said that Lake's obvious attempts to do so were worthy of sanctions under Arizona state law.
They also argued that the former gubernatorial candidate's claims were made in "bad faith" that was "demonstrated by her scattershot approach to litigation, her claims' lack of legal and factual merit," and the lawsuit's role in an alleged "larger scheme," Independent reported.
