Harmeet Dhillon, a conservative attorney and Trump campaign advisor, was appointed by former President Donald Trump to lead a new ‘Election Integrity team’ in Arizona to “stop Democrat interference” and “secure” the state’s elections, the Republican National Committee (RNC) and Arizona Republican Party (AZGOP) announced Tuesday.
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Georgia Democrats have sued the state Election Board, arguing new measures implemented by the agency regarding the election-certification process are illegal.
According to the lawsuit filed Monday in state court, local election officials are now able to “hunt for purported election irregularities of any kind, potentially delaying certification and displacing longstanding (and court-supervised) processes for addressing fraud.”
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Kari Lake filed a reply brief in her election case appeal with the Arizona Court of Appeals on Tuesday. It accused Maricopa County of rigging the 2022 election, and said the county admitted wrongdoing in its answering brief. Her appeal is asking to overturn the lower court’s ruling rejecting her Rule 60(b) motion, which asked to consider new evidence that had arisen since the trial. A Rule 60(b) motion asks the court for relief from an entry or judgment, which the trial court refused to grant after her trial.
Drafted by attorney Bryan Blehm and signed also by Lake’s attorney Kurt Olsen, the summary in the introduction stated, “In its Answering Brief, Maricopa makes demonstrably false or misleading arguments to distract the Court from the evidence and admissions showing that Maricopa blatantly violated Arizona election laws, falsely certified it conducted L&A testing on October 11, 2022, and apparently rigged the November 2022 Election to fail on Election Day.”
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Kari Lake filed a bar complaint against Katie Hobbs’ attorney, Alexis Danneman of Perkins Coie, on Monday over “false statements” Danneman may have made regarding Lake’s announcement that she was running for U.S. Senate. Danneman, who is representing Hobbs in Lake’s lawsuit challenging Hobbs’ gubernatorial win over Lake, sent Lake’s attorneys an email last week stating that she had violated the state’s resign to run laws and must drop her election challenge.
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Kari Lake’s appeal of the second dismissal of her lawsuit by the trial court judge is winding its way back up through the courts. Last week, she filed her opening brief with the Arizona Court of Appeals. Much of the brief focused on Maricopa County’s failure to conduct Logic & Accuracy (L&A) testing and the failure to compare voters’ signatures on their mail-in ballot affidavits to the signatures on their voter registrations, both a violation of state law and the state’s Election Procedures Manual (EPM). Violations of the EPM are class 2 misdemeanors.
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Cochise County Supervisor Tom Crosby, who attempted to conduct a hand count of ballots during the 2022 election and delayed the certification of election results, filed a lawsuit with another Arizonan, David Mast, against numerous Arizona officials challenging the results of the election. The lawsuit cited lawbreaking regarding signature verification on mail-in ballots, asserting that the violations resulted in “hundreds of thousands of illegal votes in all statewide results for the 2022 General Election.”
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Abe Hamadeh is forging ahead, challenging his 280-vote loss to Democrat Kris Mayes in the attorney general’s race, the closest statewide race in Arizona’s history. He is in the midst of challenging the trial court’s refusal to grant him a new trial after discovering that then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs withheld evidence from him prior to his trial regarding undervotes, votes that were not counted that resulted in narrowing Mayes’ lead. On Wednesday, he filed a reply to Mayes’ objections simultaneously with two amicus curiae briefs in support; one from Arizona legislative leadership and one from the America First Legal Foundation.
Hamadeh’s reply brief, primarily authored by Jennifer Wright, who previously served as the Attorney General’s Election Integrity Unit civil attorney, pointed out various contradictions in Mayes’ response. Mayes claimed that Hamadeh was “both too fast and too slow in attempting to obtain relief in this Court,” the brief stated. On the one hand, Mayes claimed that Hamadeh was causing “unreasonable delay,” yet she still asked for a regular appeals process, not a speedy one.
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After ruling against Kari Lake in a remanded election trial challenging her gubernatorial loss to Katie Hobbs, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson rejected Maricopa County’s motion for sanctions against Lake on Friday, just three days after their attorneys filed the request. The county’s attorneys asserted that Lake’s team made several false statements to the court. Lake’s attorneys filed a response opposing the request on Thursday.
The Kari Lake War Room Twitter account tweeted after the news came out, “The Judge has DENIED requests by Maricopa County & Katie Hobbs for sanctions against @KariLake. We knew the Fake News narrative would collapse. Now it has. Kari Lake will NEVER stop fighting to restore election integrity to the people of Arizona!”
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For the second time, Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell is representing Maricopa County officials asking for sanctions against Kari Lake and her attorneys related to the 2022 election. The first request was over Lake and Mark Finchem’s lawsuit last year which sought to stop the use of electronic voting machine tabulators in the election. The second request was filed on Tuesday after Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson ruled a second time against Lake’s election lawsuit, following a second trial that he conducted after being remanded back from the Arizona Supreme Court.
Mitchell was not required to represent the county officials in the lawsuit; if she had disagreed with it, she could have asked outside counsel or another county attorney to replace her. Mitchell ran for office last year with a barrage of campaign literature labeling herself the “conservative” candidate.
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Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Melissa Julian awarded sanctions last week against Mark Finchem and his attorney Tom McCauley over Finchem’s lawsuit challenging his election loss in the secretary of state’s race. Democrat Adrian Fontes, who won the race, asked the court for sanctions in December. Finchem and McCauley will be required to pay attorneys fees; the legal costs of Fontes’ and then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs’ office defending against the lawsuit.
Finchem issued a statement after the ruling. “The 6-page order by Judge Julian to award lawyer reimbursement to leftist litigators who represent the Sinaloa Cartel, now the installed Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, and Katie Hobbs, the installed Governor of Arizona, is contemptible judicial overreach beyond all statutory and Rules of Civil Procedure for the Superior Courts of Arizona,” he said. “This award is designed to quash any and all dissent where elections are in question. The Maricopa County 2022 election was the most embarrassing election in American history. As a result, 70% of Americans doubt the outcome of the 2022 elections in Arizona (Rasmussen Poll).”
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Abe Hamadeh’s election challenge for attorney general continues to wind its way through the court system, with his attorneys filing a reply in Mohave County Superior Court supporting their motion for a new trial on Monday. The Consolidated Reply in Support of Plaintiffs’ Motion for a New Trial addressed the claims brought up in the response from defendant Kris Mayes, who was declared the winner in the race. The lawsuit, which included the Republican National Committee and Republican Jeanne Kentch of Mohave County as plaintiffs, was also filed against Secretary of State Adrian Fontes.
Hamadeh’s reply brief, led by former Attorney General Election Integrity Unit civil attorney Jen Wright, emphasized the race’s closeness as a reason for a do-over.
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Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) sent a letter to Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) Monday, requesting she investigates Republican Kari Lake for allegedly violating state law by sharing images of voter signatures on social media. Tim LaSota, one of Lake’s attorneys, accused Fontes of selectively quoting the law to defame Lake.
“This is becoming all too common in politics – another attempt to weaponize the justice system with a phony allegation against a Republican. Adrian Fontes selectively quotes the statute in an attempt to distort the law and smear Kari Lake in the process. Kris Mayes should immediately say that she will have no part in this shameful, disgusting effort,” LaSota said in a statement emailed to The Arizona Sun Times.
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Kari Lake’s election lawsuit contesting her loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs in the gubernatorial race is at the Arizona Court of Appeals after being dismissed by the trial court judge. Lake filed a reply on Tuesday to the responses from defendants Maricopa County and then-Secretary of State Hobbs.
The reply brief began, “Defendants ignore the trial court’s holdings, misstate the law, misstate material facts, and — unable to get their stories straight — contradict each other.”
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The former Election Integrity Unit civil attorney for the Arizona Attorney General’s Office is making it clear she does not believe the new Attorney General is rightfully in office. Jennifer Wright, who resigned before Democrat Kris Mayes took office — but who Mayes’ office claimed was fired to journalists, causing Wright to start the process for a libel lawsuit — has joined the legal team of Mayes’ opponent, Republican Abe Hamadeh, who is challenging the results of the extremely close election.
Wright tweeted that she initially turned down Hamadeh’s offer, but changed her mind “after @krismayes targeted me by falsely and unlawfully planting a hit on me on @azcentral.” She said “it became clear that left unchecked, the new admin intended to abuse their power.”
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As the second day of Kari Lake’s trial contesting Arizona’s gubernatorial election wrapped up Thursday, various election law attorneys provided their analysis on social media and videos. Some were optimistic that Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson would grant Lake relief, declaring her the winner or calling for a new election, but some were not as optimistic.
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In a 13-page decision Friday, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Melissa Iyer Julian dismissed with prejudice a lawsuit challenging the certified election outcome by former Republican secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem, KOLD News 13 reported.
Julian’s ruling rejected Finchem’s allegations of misconduct and election administration errors, goes on to forbid Finchem from refiling a future complaint on the same grounds. Judge Julian also and affirmed Democrat Adrian Fontes is the state’s Secretary of State-elect.
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As Kari Lake’s lawsuit contesting the results of the gubernatorial election winds its way through the legal system, various legal experts are speaking out on the merits of the case. Former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, who is currently a professor at Liberty University and director of the election integrity legal organization Amistad Project, warned on Friday that if Lake’s lawsuit is dismissed, allowing Democrat Katie Hobbs to become governor, it will undermine the rule of law.
Kline tweeted, “If Hobbs is successful in dismissing Lake’s suit it only proves 1) election officials can violate procedure and law without accountability 2) partisan private vendors can still be used to conduct core government functions 3) legislators & others have failed to learn from 2020 and 4) many of those who claimed to fix the 2020 problems are wrong!”
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Candidates and other interested parties have started filing lawsuits contesting the election results in Arizona, particularly in Maricopa County, where 59 percent of the vote centers were plagued with ballot tabulation problems, causing long lines in heavily Republican areas forcing some voters to leave without voting. One of those lawsuits was filed on Monday by State Senator Sonny Borrelli (R-Lake Havasu), challenging the use of AI to verify signatures, which Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich has stated is illegal.
Attorneys for the election integrity organization True the Vote drafted the complaint. It asserted, “Maricopa County ran 1.3 million images, on monitors, past the eyes of a few dozen of its Signature Verifiers at such a rapid clip that it was physically impossible for them to verify the Delegated Software’s adjudications about those images reliably.” True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht told The Arizona Sun Times, “Many voters in Mohave County reported concern that their votes were being diluted by events in Maricopa County. We listened, retained counsel, and got to work. This litigation seeks to uncover the source of their concerns. We look forward to seeing it tried in court.”
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Arizona Judge Peter Thompson issued an order Tuesday for Arizona gubernatorial nominees Kari Lake and 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.
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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.
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Video recordings emerged on Friday capturing conversations between Delaware County, Pennsylvania election workers about obscuring “derogatory” information regarding the November 3, 2020 election.
The footage was secretly recorded by whistleblower Regina Miller and is among numerous recordings serving as evidence in litigation alleging multiple violations of election law as well as Pennsylvania’s “Right to Know” statute. Plaintiffs Gregory Stenstrom, Leah Hoopes and Ruth Morin filed the lawsuit in Delaware County Court in November.
The suit maintains that former Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, Delaware County, the county’s Board of Elections, and numerous election officials conspired to dispose of voting records to conceal election-law violations. Four counts made in the litigation assert that public officials destroyed evidence, breaching state civil law regarding fraud and failing to adequately answer a right-to-know request filed by a third-party attorney in May.
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Friday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Nashville Taxpayer Protection Act Attorney Jim Roberts to the newsmakers line to give updates on the referendum reaching the ballot and the potential lawsuit filed by Metro Legal against Election Commission and petitioners.
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A federal judge dismissed a Georgia lawsuit Thursday challenging the legality of drop boxes and absentee signature verification. The suit, filed by the 12th Congressional District Republican Committee, sought to eliminate the use of absentee ballot drop boxes and invalidate signature matching protocol added earlier this year and for the runoff election.
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