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Judge rules defamation case against Kari Lake can go forward [1]
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Date: 2023-12-20
Arizona Senate hopeful Kari Lake must be a little concerned about the recent ruling in Georgia that awarded Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman $148 million in their defamation case, because Lake basically did the same thing that Rudy Giuliani did: defamed an election worker with lies and upended his life, resulting in threats to him and his family. The election official is Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican.
Lake and her lawyers, who are themselves facing additional penalties for clogging up the courts with frivolous lawsuits stemming from Lake’s never-ending court battles over her 2022 gubernatorial loss, have been trying to get Stephen Richer’s lawsuit tossed. In addition to making a free speech defense, arguing that Lake has a First Amendment right to express her opinions, yesterday they said in court that Lake’s statements were “rhetorical hyperbole” that shouldn’t be taken as fact. That’s rich, because a whole lotta MAGA shitheads did take her statements as fact, and acted on them—violently.
Richer says the case goes well beyond the First Amendment: “Slinging mud is fair game, but Arizona law and the First Amendment draw a line at defamation,” and today a judge agreed with him and ruled Richer’s lawsuit can go forward.
A Maricopa County judge ruled Wednesday that a defamation case against former gubernatorial and current U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake will go forward.
Maricopa County Recorder Richer filed his defamation lawsuit back in March. In it he alleges that Lake, who lost the 2022 Governor’s race to Democrat Katie Hobbs by about 17,000 votes, had ruined his life with the lies she told blaming him for her defeat. The lies became central to Lake’s nonstop grift, online and at rallies—lies, Richer says, Kari Lake knew were lies, hence “malice.”
Among other things, Lake claimed that Richer added 300,000 ballots to the total vote count. At one rally she said, “We know that 300,000 illegal ballots” were added to the tally. How does she “know” this? And why doesn’t anyone else, such as election officials or the courts that’ve looked into Lake’s claims? Not only didn’t he add ballots, Richer responded, he couldn’t even if he wanted to. (We hear this every election, that thousands of Mexicans crossed the border to vote illegally for Democrats.)
Lake also claimed that Richer was the prime mover behind the problems with the printers in Maricopa County, which caused procedural hiccups in several precincts. The printer error did occur, and although no one was denied their right to cast a vote, the machine glitch was the basis for most of Lake’s lawsuits, all of which she lost. In her telling, though, it wasn’t simply a technical error; no, it was intentional and Stephen Richer was the cause.
Lake told her followers during a Jan. 29 “Save Arizona Rally” that Richer and Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates intentionally printed incorrectly sized ballot images on Election Day 2022 as a form of “sabotage” because they knew that the majority of in-person voters that day would be Republicans supporting Lake, and that the incorrectly-sized ballots would cause the tabulators to reject those ballots.
Sounds to me like she’s presenting specific “facts” (who, what, when, why), not “rhetorical hyperbole.” Just like Rep. Rusty Bowers, who faced harassment and death threats at his home for refusing to get on board the Trump fake elector train in Arizona (while his daughter lay dying at home), Stephen Richer was subject to the same violence from MAGA nutters:
The complaint alleges that as a result of Lake's statements Richer and his family "have been the target of threats of violence, and even death, and have had their lives turned upside down."
As a result of the threats, Richer’s said he’s always looking over his shoulder, and he’s had to spend thousands of dollars for extra security around his home and at his wife’s workplace. These MAGA nitwits are slime; they have no policy—only threats, fear, intimidation, violence.
Like Trump, who claims the mountain of lawsuits against him are little more than Joe Biden and the Democrats trying to silence him, Lake maintains her opponents want to clamp down on her speech as she campaigns for the Republican Senate primary. She may have learned one thing: When she told the crowd at the Turning Points USA hatefest in Phoenix last week that the defamation case should be dismissed, she didn’t double down on her lies about Richer and repeat them, like Giuliani did—$148 million will get your attention.
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