Loading ...ON THE KARI LAKE LAWSUIT ..FROM JEFF CHILDERS
This is an impressive and encouraging development. Elections law is super strict, designed to test cases early, to keep the court system from becoming a weapon for defeated candidates’ sour grapes. Thus there is an unusually high threshold for plaintiffs to get past the dismissal stage. The normal lawsuit life-cycle looks like this:
(I) Complaint -> (II) Motion to Dismiss -> (III) Answer -> (IV) Discovery -> (V) Motion for Summary Judgment -> (VI) Trial.
Elections cases essentially combine the dismissal (Stage II) and summary judgment (Stage V) tests into Stage II.
Remember? Every single one of the Trump election challenges got torpedoed during Stage II, and were dismissed. Anybody who’s litigated one of these cases (I have) can tell you how hard it is to run the dismissal gauntlet. It’s HARD. And you have to litigate under unbelievable time pressure from hyper-short deadlines.
Yesterday, the judge preserved Kari’s two allegations: that ballot printers were intentionally tampered with, and that elections officials broke chain of custody rules for ballots, allowing illegal voting. Trials are usually expedited in elections cases, and here the judge ordered a two-day trial before January 2, 2023. That’s not a lot of time. And, two days of trial will be tight.
Kari’s lawyers won’t get any time off for the holidays.
The bottom line is that Kari Lake’s lawsuit has made it further than 99% of all elections cases, and has already contradicted critics, including many in the Republican establishment who loudly and publicly told Kari she should hang it up, she lost.
And, any trial is bad news for the incumbent, because if there is ANY real evidence, it will come out, go into the permanent record, and will have to be dealt with SOMEHOW.
So. This is great news!
Nice succinct assessment.
I hope her team gets the support they need.
Seems like the requisite evidence is already well documented.
Kari has already offered remedies: “I won” or “Do over” in Maricopa.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/kari-lake-election-fraud-lawsuit-goes-trial-says-pronouns-are-iwon
Judge threw out 8 of her ten claims. (Which ones? And why?)
And leaves Lake with having to prove that printer malfunctions were INTENTIONAL, as were the chain of custody failures.
Proving intent is a high bar, and seems to me to be inconsistent with public expectations for a fair election. Whatever the reason (intentional or otherwise), failures on THIS SCALE (relative to the vote margin) should void the result.
From what I understand PD, intentionality or fraud is not required. All that is needed is to prove that illegal votes were cast, and the numbers of illegal votes cast are great enough to swing the election. That said, I have no expertise in this area, and I have little faith in the various judicial systems of the west, including the U.S. This being publicly aired may not be immediately beneficial to Lake, but it will benefit the drive to fix corrupt elections. Longer term, Kari Lake probably has a date with destiny. She doesn’t need to be governor. Who knows, if DeSantis keeps pissing off Trump, Lake might be the next VP!
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/12/20/arizona-judge-permits-kari-lake-lawsuit-to-proceed-to-trial/
“Mrs. Lake faces a steep hill to climb as the election results were certified as accurate and correct by county and state officials. Lake will have to prove any tabulation errors or ballot custody issues were the result of intentional wrongdoing by Maricopa County officials.”
Dutchman is a regular at CTH and provides very well thought out analyses:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/12/20/arizona-judge-permits-kari-lake-lawsuit-to-proceed-to-trial/#comment-9430770
Copied and Pasted…thanks pedro…this seems to paint very strong case
dutchman
December 20, 2022 3:18 am
Reply to Rhinobuster
Yes, thats a disappointment, however that issue WILL be heard, in the case Mohave County is bringing against Maracopa County, which as its County vs. County, should go straight to State Supreme Court, which unlike Texas, I the Supreme Court of Az. i.e. no appeal.
Mohave is alleging their is no legal, legislative or Constitutional justification for Maracopa County (and it was ONLY Maracopa County, to use AI for signature verification.
Az. election laws and rules, policies and proceedures do NOT make any provisions for (allow) AI to be used.
They are alleging the use of AI allowed large #’s of fraudulent ballots to ‘get thru’ and each fraudulent ballot counted in Maracopa County, disenfranchises the voters in Mohave County, because it ‘waters down’ their vote, which is an issue already decided by SCOTUS.
As for Kari, she has a guy that worked for the last nine years, serviving/maintaining the tabulators and ballot printers FOT Maracopa County.
He has already asserted, in a sworn deposition, that the ONLY possible way those machines could have failed, is if they were INTENTIONALLY reset.
On chain of custody, she has the runbeck whistleblower, saying they recieved almost 300,000 ballots on election day, with no chain of custody or security.
As the certified totals have only 17,000 lead for hobbs, obviously 300,000 is enough the effect the results.
I believe once KL team present that evidence, the burden of proof switches to the Hobbs team.
THEY must prove the ballots in question are legitimate, lawful ballots, by producing chain of custody documents for the ballots KL has challenged.
And they must provide maintanence logs for the machines, everyone who touched them.
THATS how you respond to a challenge of ballots; KL doesn’t HAVE to prove the ballots are invalid; ballots are not people, “innocent until proven guilty”; they are DOCUMENTS.
Like any other document (Will, Power of Attorney, Deposition) if a document is challenged by one party, the other has to prove it is legal and legitimate.
Cause you can’t prove a negative.
You say this Will is legitimate and legal (or ballot, any legal document),.. PROVE it.
By Az. Law, if they have no chain of custudy documentation, for 300,000 ballots, it would seem they are discounted.
And the maintenance technician testimony makes it pretty clear it was intentional.
She has sworn depositions on wait times disenfranchisement due to the “malfunctions”.
How does Hobbs team PROVE their was no disenfranchisement from the widespread machine “malfunctions” or counter the accusation, with evidence, that it wasn’t intentional?
Anyway, FIRST election challenge case, to get past “standing”, that in itself is a WIN.