After two days of testimony in Maricopa County, Arizona, Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson is preparing to deliver his ruling on the two legal challenges. A decision could be announced as early as today. Kari Lake is asking for the judge to declare her the winner or establish a new election.
The trial circled on two specific points of Kari Lake’s legal claims. One point alleges intentional misconduct with ballot printers, paper stock and tabulators. The second point on intentional subversion of required chain of custody processes for ballots.
On the merits of the two points, Kari Lake’s legal team did seem to prove that election officials intentionally and purposefully created a problem by generating a ballot that required 20-inch paper stock, then electronically modifying the ballot image (shrink to print) to a 19-inch standard. This caused tabulators to reject the ballots. There was also convincing testimony the chain of custody was intentionally violated.
A good rundown of Day-Two is HERE– Ms. Kari Lake then talked to media {Direct Rumble Link}
My own review of two days of testimony and court action is not optimistic toward Kari Lake’s challenge.
Yes, there is no doubt the election was intentionally screwed up by officials in Maricopa County who are transparently averse to the interests of Kari Lake. The bias and opposition expressed by the election officials is visible, palpable and substantive. These are activists within the county election system.
As a result, it’s clear the election officials did everything to influence or tilt the election outcome. Very clear. However, short of them taking the stand, taking an oath, and stating they cheated and broke the law, the value of plausible deniability protects them. It’s almost impossible to prove election fraud and tampering without an admission by those who did the fraud and tampering.
Lake had a steep uphill climb, and unfortunately one of the larger weaknesses carried by all MAGA candidates (in a general sense) is the low quality of their lawyers. I know each candidate cannot say it themselves, and I am aware it is not the popular thing to say out loud, but the quality of the lawyer is critical when the election challenge issues finally reach the courtroom.
There is a big difference between filing motions, writing legal opinions, and being able to structure questions in real time with witnesses under oath. Lakes legal team is very competent on the written legal analysis, but inside the court, where telling your story and winning your arguments through the testimony of the witnesses becomes important, Lakes legal team was weak. The questions were worded with unnecessary complexity and often missed the core truths.
The biggest example of the weak courtroom skill came when co-Elections Director for Maricopa County Robert Scott Jarrett perjured himself on the witness stand. The Lake team completely missed the moment, fumbled, spoke in circles and did a terrible job pointing out the brutal nature of the falsehoods Jarrett delivered. The defense lawyers breathed a sigh of relief.
Court cases are about telling the story of the truth, and getting the truthful story told through the testimony of others is a skill. There is a reason why top-notch courtroom lawyers are paid a great deal of money; the client is purchasing a skillset only held by a small segment of lawyers. Mrs. Lake had adequate representation, but the legal team was not up to the challenge of telling a compelling story in court in a manner that could climb the legal mountain they faced.
You can watch more about this issue via Bannon War Room {Direct Rumble Link at 03:45} Forward the video to 3:45.
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Under Arizona law, an election challenge is only about the results, and the standard of proof is simply that the results are “in doubt.” The challenger does not have to explain why. (S)He does not have to find misconduct nor fraud. The Court can then, at its option, either declare the winner or order a runoff. About 100 years ago, the Arizona Court did declare a winner.
Millions and millions of words and the lie still stands. Maybe time for talking is over.
Ballot harvesting in AZ is illegal, but then harvested ballots are deemed to count. You tell me WTF is wrong in our system.
I thought this was a good summary of the Kari Lake/voter fraud legalities in Arizona.
Judge ruled against Lake. No evidence of intentional fraud. Bye bye.
Sundance had a good explanation on this thread or an earlier one on the steep hill to climb regarding these types of lawsuits. What she and her lawyers should have done was get a lot of women, black and hispanic Lake voters together to claim discrimination at the polling places. As Sundance explained, then the courts can get involved. As I have said many times, mail in and early voting needs to stop ASAP! Until that happens, no one should have any confidence in our elections.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3785655-judge-dismisses-remainder-of-kari-lakes-election-lawsuit-following-two-day-trial/
“Judge dismisses remainder of Kari Lake’s election lawsuit following two-day trial”
Told you. We aren’t going to fix this in the courts. They already own the courts, just as they do those who do the counting. The only thing we have left is the 2nd Amendment and they are already working hard to remove that right, too. So if we’re going to do something … even protest in mass … we need to do it soon. Or we won’t be allowed to, I fear. Just saying …
Kari Lake’s lawsuit is dismissed by the court.
https://www.clerkofcourt.maricopa.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/4531
I guess I missed the part about Lake’s own witness (Heather Honey) saying the chain of custody documents must exist even though she didn’t have a copy. The only thing they had going for them in this entire trial that had a chance of working are those missing chain of custody documents covering 300,000 ballots. I guess we’ll never know if they do since the defendants were never required to turn them over to the court. This was a MAJOR screwup on the part of her team! I know it’s easy to sit back and Monday morning quarterback this thing, but my God how could they be so inept or incompetent to not cover that singular fact in detail.
They had nothing to prove misconduct except speculation and hearsay and that won’t cut it when you’re talking about throwing out an election. If you can’t say definitively it was the Colonel, with a candlestick in the library then you’ve got zero. No blood on his clothes, no fingerprints on the candlestick and the door was open.
I swear if I hadn’t wasted the best part of my life chasing fish around the ocean, I’d have taken up law as a hobby.