Breaking: Judge's Decision in Kari Lake's Arizona Election Challenge Could Be Bad News for Katie Hobbs
A new development in Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s election challenge could potentially spell bad news for current Secretary of State and Governor-elect Katie Hobbs.
In an early Monday morning hearing in the Maricopa County Superior Court, a judge listened to the case to dismiss Lake’s lawsuit and did not dismiss it out of hand.
The judge is, however, taking the motion to dismiss Lake’s lawsuit “under advisement,” as KTVK noted.
While not quite the legal victory that Lake’s team is looking for, the decision is still a stark contrast to a similar lawsuit filed in Arizona.
Secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem and Congressional candidate Jeff Zink filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the election results, and it was dismissed with prejudice, meaning it can’t be filed again.
Arizona Attorney General candidate Abe Hamadeh has filed a similar lawsuit to Lake’s, with a motion to dismiss set to be heard on Monday afternoon. Assuming that it is not denied, a trial is set for Friday.
Lake’s lawsuit, which the conservative firebrand has described as “the strongest election lawsuit in U.S. history,” can be read in its entirety here.
Arizona,
I wanted to give you a critical update on our fight to save our state.
Read the entire lawsuit here:https://t.co/EDytPyRllZ pic.twitter.com/gAP94UKhLm
— Kari Lake (@KariLake) December 14, 2022
The lawsuit seeks to have Lake named the winner of the 2022 gubernatorial race. In lieu of that, the lawsuit would then seek the current results to be vacated and to have another election.
One definitive big win for Lake came on Friday afternoon when Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson ordered Maricopa County to allow Lake’s lawyers to inspect 50 randomly selected “ballot-on-demand” printed ballots cast on Election day, 50 randomly selected early ballots cast in the race, and 50 randomly selected ballots that were marked “spoiled.”
BREAKING: Arizona judge grants Kari Lake’s request to inspect Maricopa County ballots pic.twitter.com/mc9zkpFRsb
— George (@BehizyTweets) December 16, 2022
KTVK did note that Judge Thompson denied Lake’s team’s request to copy and photograph those 150 ballots.
Democrat Secretary of State Katie Hobbs defeated Lake by just over 17,000 votes in the Nov. 8 election.
KPNX-TV notes the following timeline should the lawsuit not be dismissed, which as of this writing, it has not been:
- Wednesday and Thursday (Dec. 21 and 22), there will be a two-day hearing.
- The judge will then have five days (Dec. 27) whether to confirm Hobbs as the winner or toss out her victory.
As KTVK reports, it is unclear when the judge will ultimately make a decision, though given the timing of the aforementioned hearing, he does not have a lot of time to do so.
This is a developing story and will be updated accordingly.
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