Republican Kari Lake on Tuesday issued what she called a “critical update on the fight to save our state” as a judge held a brief hearing on her lawsuit seeking to overturn the election of Democrat Katie Hobbs as Arizona’s next governor.
“My legal team has been working non-stop investigating and gathering sworn declarations from whistleblowers and witnesses building the strongest election lawsuit in U.S. history,” she said in a video released on Rumble.
“Our lawsuit exposes many of the issues that have plagued our election system in Arizona and have disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of Arizonans. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that Election Day in Maricopa County was an absolute debacle,” she said.
Lake noted that voting was marred by long lines that forced voters to wait for hours as well as faulty voting machines.
Lake also posted the video to Twitter.
“Election Day operations in Maricopa County were a nightmare,” she said.
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
Lake said the Election Day problems were nothing new, and blamed her opponent in the race.
“Arizona faced the most egregious case of the fox guarding the hen house when. Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, my opponent, refused to recuse herself from overseeing her own election,” she said.
Lake also noted that Maricopa County election officials who opposed her candidacy also knew that Lake’s supporters would be voting in person in large numbers on what she called a “sabotaged Election Day.”
Lake said her lawsuit questions the admissibility of 300,000 ballots for which she said no clear chain of custody existed and which should not have been counted. She also said ballots that failed to pass the test of signature verification were counted.
“Our movement is so powerful that those running our election system, including the woman I ran against, had to pull out every trick possible to silence our voices and trample on our sacred vote,” she said.
“They thought we would just sulk and accept the results of a rigged, sham election. They were wrong. My resolve to fight for the millions of Arizonans disgusted with years of botched elections is stronger than ever,” she said.
Maricopa County will do everything in their power to hide those ballots from you.
They will say that they audited them themselves and saw nothing untoward.
Don’t accept that.
Demand full transparency
— Kari Lake War Room (@KariLakeWarRoom) December 14, 2022
On Tuesday, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson gave Hobbs, acting in her capacity as secretary of state, Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer until noon on Thursday to file motions to dismiss Lake’s lawsuit. Lake’s legal team then has until noon on Saturday to state its case in response, according to the Arizona Mirror, a nonprofit online news site.
Oral arguments, if needed, are scheduled for Dec. 19 and evidentiary hearings are set for Dec. 20 and 21.
“The secretary does believe that the court will be able to dispose of this case in its entirety on motions to dismiss without the need for an evidentiary hearing,” Andy Gaona, an attorney with the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office, said Tuesday during the hearing.
“Pushing this back any further will threaten the orderly transition of power,” Gaona said, according to KPNX-TV in Phoenix.
Thompson said he was aware that Hobbs is currently set to take office Jan. 2, KPNX reported.
“The ruling will take us right up to 11th hour, and I have serious concerns about that. The ruling isn’t something I’ll be able to do in 15 minutes,” he said.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
