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Court orders 3 Arizona MAGA nitwits to pay legal fees for Democrat they sued [1]
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Date: 2022-08-31
Mark Finchem, an Oath Keeper, Jan 6 attendee, and Republican candidate for Arizona Secretary of State. Now a little poorer.
It didn’t take long for Arizona to emerge as one of focal points of the Jan. 6 insurrection. After all, it was on election night 2020 in Phoenix, right after Fox News called Arizona for Biden, that the “Stop the Steal” movement kicked into high gear. Within weeks of election night, the eventual Jan. 6 planner, Ali Alexander, organized a Dec. 19 “Stop the Steal” rally at the Arizona Capitol, attended by Arizona Congressmen Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs.
In fact, Alexander, who later took credit for planning the attempted coup on Jan. 6, said Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs were central to his efforts. Then stories broke that at least two Arizona legislators, Mark Finchem and Anthony Kern, attended the insurrection, although both said they never got close to the Capitol, which turned out to be a lie.
So it was no surprise that just a few weeks after the insurrection, 44 Democratic legislators from Arizona sent a letter to the FBI asking them to investigate Gosar, Finchem, and Kern and their connections to Jan. 6. That story still hasn’t been told, but I’m hoping the Jan. 6 Committee will soon fill in the gaps because they are huuuuge. The treasonous trio responded to the Democrats’ letter by suing for defamation—but not all 44 Dems, just one female Hispanic lawmaker from Yuma, Charlene Fernandez.
In March 2022, after Fernandez’s term ended, a Yuma County Superior Court Judge finally heard the case, and promptly threw it out. (As if anyone could defame those three!)
Judge Levi Gunderson dismissed the case and said its defamation claims were baseless and Fernandez’s comments and the letter she signed were clearly protected by the First Amendment.
This week the Judge went a step further, ordering the three dangerous nincompoops to pay Fernandez’s legal fees, which amount to $75,000, because the lawsuit “was groundless and not made in good faith.”
“The Court finds that (the) lawsuit … was brought for an improper purpose, having been filed against a political opponent primarily for purposes of harassment,” Gunderson wrote.
Mark Finchem won the Republican primary for Secretary of State and, if elected, promises to repeal the 2020 vote, as if he could do that. The QAnon-linked nutter received a subpoena from the Jan. 6 Committee to explain his role in the fake electors scheme but refuses to testify. Anthony Kern, who lost his 2020 race, returned from the Jan. 6 insurrection to serve as a counter for the Arizona “audit” until, that is, stories broke that a traitorous rioter was counting votes, and he was promptly canned because of “optics.” Paul Gosar, whose own siblings call a racist, is running unopposed in Arizona’s 9th District. Both he and Rep. Andy Biggs were subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 Committee to explain their role in planning the coup—the very thing the Democrats’ letter requested. Both have refused to testify, calling the Jan. 6 Committee a “witch hunt.” It’s more likely they’re hunting for patriots who will tell the truth, so I can understand Gosar’s reluctance to appear. So sue me, you butt-crack in a suit.
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