Kari Lake Trial: Maricopa County's Expert Witness Didn't Even See 1 Ballot in Bombshell Admission
If you listen to the left, you’d think Kari Lake’s legal team got destroyed in the courtroom on Thursday.
Lake, the GOP Arizona gubernatorial candidate, lost by a count of 17,000 votes in a midterm election plagued by irregularities and delays in in-person voting. She’s challenging the results — and, as KVOA-TV reports, the fate of that challenge is now in the hands of a Maricopa County judge.
While these challenges are long shots to begin with, if just because of how the system works, lefty site Raw Story was convinced an expert witness called by Maricopa County “destroy[ed] Kari Lake’s case in less than 60 seconds.”
“An expert witness called by lawyers representing Maricopa County on Thursday ripped apart defeated Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s case to overturn the election in just one minute,” the story began.
That witness, University of Wisconsin political science professor Kenneth Mayer, “destroyed” her case thusly:
“My high-level response is that all the claims that were made in the complaint about the effects of voter wait times, the claims of disenfranchisement, claims about a disproportionate effect on Republicans and their voters, that they are all based on pure speculation,” he claimed.
“There’s simply no data to support any of those claims, and there’s quite a bit of data that suggests this did not happen.”
Oh, snap. Well, this just proves the entire thing is a farce, right? I mean, he’s an expert. That’s how you get to be called an “expert witness,” after all. And if there’s one thing to know, it’s that you need to Trust The Experts.
Even if that “expert,” according to Kari Lake’s official campaign account, “reviewed absolutely no data about plaintiff’s claims on signature verification before writing his report and submitting it to the court.”
🚨 Breaking 🚨
Maricopa County’s expert witness reviewed absolutely no data about plaintiff’s claims on signature verification before writing his report and submitting it to the court.
— Kari Lake War Room (@KariLakeWarRoom) December 22, 2022
Oh, and that’s not all.
Did Mayer inspect signature verification on Maricopa County ballots? Negative.
Does he have, despite his full-throated defense of voting machines and tabulators in Maricopa County, any expertise in technology matters? Nope, the account reported.
Was he even in Maricopa County on Election Day to witness the chaos firsthand? Of course not.
“Expert” never inspected signature verification on any ballot in Maricopa county.
Claims no cyber expertise despite defending the machines and tabulators used during the election during his reports.
Also was not present in Maricopa County during election day
— Kari Lake War Room (@KariLakeWarRoom) December 22, 2022
And he admits he didn’t examine the ballots. https://t.co/hOwnaHV2a8
— Wendy Rogers (@WendyRogersAZ) December 22, 2022
And why is this important? As the Twitter account noted, Mayer admitted in his testimony that Election Day voting favored Republicans by 70 percent.
Expert forced to acknowledge that election day voting favored Republican by 70%
— Kari Lake War Room (@KariLakeWarRoom) December 22, 2022
Furthermore, Maricopa County’s expert wrote his report based on … what he was told by Maricopa County officials, apparently.
Maricopa County’s expert witness admitted that he had no means of verifying the accuracy of any of the information Maricopa County supplied for him to make his report.
Their defense continues to be “Just trust us.”
— Kari Lake War Room (@KariLakeWarRoom) December 22, 2022
Nor is Kenneth Mayer a disinterested party. Maricopa County apparently picked as its expert an extremely “woke” man who has tweeted about his contempt for former President Donald Trump and the GOP.
If you read this closely you may be able to detect some bias from Maricopa County’s “expert.” https://t.co/sEvTOy1WSx
— Kari Lake War Room (@KariLakeWarRoom) December 22, 2022
While the Mayer tweet thread retweeted by the Kari Lake War Room was locked down as of Friday morning — as, indeed, was his entire account — an archived version shows exactly who he is.
“In my Spring 2019 presidency syllabus, I noted how the public viewed Trump. After describing why his supporters liked him, I wrote: ‘To others, he is a spectacularly unqualified and catastrophically unfit egomaniac who poses an overt threat to the Republic,'” Mayer wrote in a thread after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incursion.
“Now this same president has incited a violent insurrection and coup attempt in an effort to remain in power after losing an election. It resulted in the murder of a Capitol Police officer and the desecration of the U.S. Capitol,” he continued.
“I wonder if those critics in the state legislature would now like to retract their claims that I was indoctrinating my students, and apologize for trying to get me fired. I’m not holding my breath.”
So, in other words, the “destructive” testimony of Mayer can best be summed up this way:
“We brought experts who are familiar with the machines, ballots, chain of custody and the math behind elections,” the Lake War Room account said.
“Maricopa County brought a Woke College Professor who has opinions on stuff.”
We brought experts who are familiar with the machines, ballots, chain of custody and the math behind elections.
Maricopa County brought a Woke College Professor who has opinions on stuff. https://t.co/lvrSHruit6
— Kari Lake War Room (@KariLakeWarRoom) December 22, 2022
“After closer examination, Maricopa County’s expert is a college professor from Wisconsin with no background in statistics or election work,” it added. “He’s just a guy with a degree who doesn’t like Trump and writes about politics.
“We are baffled that the defendants chose this man.”
After closer examination, Maricopa County’s expert is a college professor from Wisconsin with no background in statistics or election work.
He’s just a guy with a degree who doesn’t like Trump and writes about politics.
We are baffled that the defendants chose this man.
— Kari Lake War Room (@KariLakeWarRoom) December 22, 2022
So, beyond those 60 seconds of utter destruction Raw Story was so giddy about, this “expert testimony” was an embarrassment.
But then, what do you expect? The media called Kari Lake a “denier” throughout the campaign and shrugged when in-person voting — which overwhelmingly favors Republicans — in Arizona’s largest county went haywire on Election Day.
Now as always, the establishment fix is in.
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