Maricopa County Recorder's Defamation Lawsuit Against Kari Lake For Election Criticism Will Advance To Trial

Richer is seeking nominal damages, punitive damages, attorneys fees, cost of suit, and a retraction of what he terms as "false and defamatory statements."

The lawsuit has been deemed an attack on Lake's rights as a citizen and a candidate by the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law’s First Amendment Clinic at Arizona State University, a traditionally liberal institution. The clinic has joined Lake’s defense team.

As previously reported by The Gateway Pundit, Richer's lawsuit is supported by Protect Democracy, a left-leaning nonprofit organization with ties to George Soros. This is the same organization that backed Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss' $148 million defamation lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani, following his allegations of their involvement in voter fraud during Georgia’s 2020 election. Protect Democracy also petitioned the Department of Justice to halt the Arizona 2020 election audit.

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The organization is accused of seeking to financially ruin and discredit anyone who questions the integrity of elections in America. Protect Democracy's attorneys argue that Lake used her social media platforms, interviews, and public speeches to defame Richer—an elected official—by criticizing Maricopa County’s handling of the 2022 election and implicating him in election irregularities. These irregularities allegedly include machine and printer failures on election day and early ballots with no chain of custody.

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January 03, 2024

Richer, who was responsible for overseeing early voting, also founded and operated the Pro-Democracy Republicans PAC, a dark money PAC aimed at eliminating candidates with a MAGA agenda. Critics argue that any objective observer who saw the evidence of Kari Lake’s alleged stolen election would reasonably believe that Richer and his colleagues intentionally manipulated the election.

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The presiding judge in this case, Jay Aldeman, used the rulings against Lake in her election contest lawsuit, which is still undergoing appeals, to dismiss Lake’s claims of election fraud as “provably false.”

The Gateway Pundit has extensively covered Kari Lake’s fight against the alleged stolen midterm election in Arizona. The reported anomalies and discrepancies include probable intentional machine failures at 60% of Maricopa County polling locations, misread votes, and hundreds of thousands of illegal mail-in ballots with no chain of custody or signature verification.

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These findings were presented by Lake’s attorneys in the Maricopa County Superior Court in December 2021 and May 2022. However, they were dismissed by Judge Peter A. Thompson.

Rachel Alexander, reporting for the AZ Sun-Times, states that Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Jay Adleman, who heard oral arguments on Lake’s Motion to Dismiss on December 19, issued his ruling denying the motion that same day. He indicated that he had already found Lake guilty without conducting a trial first. “In the Court’s view, Defendant Lake’s statements are ‘provably false’ under prevailing Arizona law,” he said.

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Adleman noted that it is a high bar to obtain a dismissal. He said, “Dismissal is permitted only when a ‘plaintiff[] would not be entitled to relief under any interpretation of the facts susceptible of proof,’” and “a motion to dismiss requires the trial court to accept all material facts alleged by the nonmoving party as true.”

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He said Richer offered two “well pled factual allegations” to support his lawsuit. First, he cited Richer’s assertion that the recorder’s office is not responsible for Election Day operations. However, although the Maricopa County Supervisors are statutorily obligated to oversee Election Day operations, the recorder is statutorily obligated to oversee mail-in ballots, which includes the 300,000 ballots Lake referred to. Additionally, Richer testified in court during Lake’s election contest trials regarding Election Day proceedings.

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Second, Adleman said “the independent report overseen by former Chief Justice Ruth McGregor did not find any evidence of intentional misconduct involving Election Day ballots.” That report was inconclusive about the cause of the printer issues on Election Day. Jennifer Wright, who was the Election Integrity Unit civil attorney for the Arizona Attorney General’s Office during the election and who performed her own investigation of Maricopa County’s election problems going back to the 2020 presidential election, told The Arizona Sun Times the report was “meaningless” since it did not include an analysis of the printer logs.

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As Alexander notes, if Richer’s lawsuit is successful, it would likely be overturned on appeal. The Arizona Supreme Court last year found Arizona State Senator Wendy Rogers not guilty of defamation after a private citizen sued her for attacking her political opponent and his modeling agency, which she said “specializes in underage girls and advertises on websites linked to sex trafficking.”

“[T]he First Amendment necessarily protects both the profound and the profane, not only conscientious candidates and civil discourse but unscrupulous politicians and negative campaigns as well,” said Justice Clint Bolick in the Majority Opinion that Rogers was innocent.

Judge Adleman ordered both parties to meet and provide an Amended Scheduling Order by January 19, 2024 in Richer v. Lake.