Maricopa County Superior Court Judge John Hannah issued a ruling Wednesday denying Kari Lake’s special action that requested to inspect the ballot affidavit envelopes, or the electronic images of those envelopes, from Maricopa County’s 2022 general election.
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Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Melissa Iyer Julian awarded sanctions on May 26 against Mark Finchem and his attorney over Finchem’s lawsuit challenging his election loss in the Arizona Secretary of State’s race to Democrat Adrian Fontes.
Finchem issued a response from his Substack. Titled “Yes, We Have a Two Tier Legal System.” In this piece, he advocated removing “judges who act outside of the law.”
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Among the nearly 100 bills delivered to Governor Katie Hobbs (D) by the Arizona State House on Monday is one relating to judge retainment elections.
House Bill (HB) 2757, sponsored by House Speaker Ben Toma (R-Peoria), addresses judges from the Arizona Court of Appeals (ACOA), which has two divisions, one in Phoenix and the other in Tucson. The ACOA comprises 28 judges, with 19 in Division 1 and nine in Division 2. Under current law, these judges are first appointed by the governor for an initial term of two years, but after that point, judges can only retain their position if approved by the public in an election. However, the only citizens who can vote to keep an ACOA judge are those within the court’s division. So, when a Division 2 judge is up for election, only Pima, Pinal, Cochise, Santa Cruz, Greenlee, Graham, and Gila County residents can make that decision.
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Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk weighed in on Abe Hamadeh’s election challenge Monday. Hamadeh is challenging election anomalies in the closest statewide race in history, the Arizona Attorney General’s race which he lost to Democrat Kris Mayes by 280 votes. Musk was responding to a tweet from Hamadeh about the large numbers of people who voted on Election Day last fall whose votes were not counted, and his response generated a flood of responses.
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Mohave County Superior Court Judge Lee Jantzen scheduled oral arguments for May 16 on whether Abe Hamadeh should get a new trial.
Jantzen dismissed his complaint challenging his loss to Kris Mayes for Arizona Attorney General in December. Jantzen’s ruling came shortly after Hamadeh filed an additional pleading to bolster his request, which accused then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs of withholding evidence from him and cited new arguments due to the Arizona Supreme Court’s ruling in Kari Lake’s election contest.
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Maricopa County officials tapped former Arizona Supreme Court Justice Ruth McGregor to investigate the printing problems in the 2022 election, and on Monday, the county released her report blaming the thickness of the ballot paper. 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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The Arizona Supreme Court rejected part of the lower two courts’ rulings throwing out Kari Lake’s election contest, remanding it back to Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson for a new trial, but there are concerns Thompson will not provide a fair trial. An election attorney in Phoenix who prefers not to be identified due to fear of retaliation, told The Arizona Sun Times that due to the perception that Thompson might be biased, he should consider recusing himself if he cannot otherwise overcome that perception of bias.
The attorney said, “The courts rarely rule in favor of these Republican election challenges, so the fact that both the Arizona Supreme Court and the Arizona Court of Appeals reversed some of Thompson’s opinion raises a concern that Thompson may have overreached, overstepped, and some may believe that’s a sign of bias. And unless he believes he can overcome that concern with not only assurances of fairness, but actual rulings guaranteeing fairness to Lake including access to ALL requested signature verification discovery, then he should seriously consider recusing himself; otherwise, it may hurt the chances of him providing a fair trial if he doesn’t and it turns out he’s biased. Remember, everyone across the country is watching this case. He should do the right thing either by guaranteeing fairness, or put everyone at ease by removing himself.”
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Former Republican candidate for Arizona Secretary of State Mark Finchem, who is contesting his loss last fall to Democrat Adrian Fontes, filed a Notice of Supplemental Authority and Evidence in Support of Contestant’s Motion for Reconsideration last week. A Maricopa County judge dismissed his lawsuit in December. Finchem included 10 exhibits consisting of mostly declarations from observers, election workers, and experts, including one who believes the election printer settings in Maricopa County were deliberately modified to create misreads of the ballots.
Exhibit K was a declaration from Bob Hughes, who has 50 years in the printing industry and 16 years printing ballots for the Maricopa County Elections Department. Last month, Hughes and a team examined the Logic & Accuracy tests that were performed immediately prior to the election, the ballots used for testing, the certification reports for each voting center, and the tabulator reports printed from the testing. He concluded, “An intentional change was made to the printers affecting the DAY OF Election ballots.”
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The Arizona Supreme Court is holding a private conference on Tuesday to discuss whether to accept Kari Lake’s appeal of lower courts dismissing her lawsuit contesting her loss of the gubernatorial race. In addition to her initial petition for review, Lake filed a reply to the defendants’ responses to her petition, and The Gavel Project’s Ryan Heath filed his own amicus curiae brief supporting her.
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New Democratic Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes issued a press release last month criticizing her predecessor, Republican Mark Brnovich, for disagreeing with two of his employees on whether there was election fraud in the 2020 midterm election. As a result of her press release, 17 people filed bar complaints against him, including Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs. Jennifer Wright, who served as the Arizona Attorney General Office’s (AGO) Election Integrity Unit (EIU) civil attorney, denounced Mayes for the move, and is asking the Arizona Supreme Court to look into whether Mayes violated ethics rules by releasing attorney-client privileged work to the public.
In a March 13 letter addressed to Justice Bill Montgomery as the chair of the Arizona Supreme Court’s Task Force on Ethics Rules Governing the State Attorney General, County Attorneys, and Other Public Lawyers, Wright referenced Mayes’ position on the task force, and said, “I encourage the Task Force to inquire as to what Rule of Professional Conduct Ms. Mayes relied upon to justify waiving her predecessor’s attorney-client privilege and publicly releasing privileged materials.”
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The Arizona Freedom Caucus (AFC) released a statement Tuesday, allowing several members to speak out against Ranked Choice Voting (RVC) in Arizona and promote two bills that would prohibit it in the state.
“RCV may not always result in the candidate with the most first-choice votes winning the election,” said AFC Member Senator Anthony Kern (R-Glendale). “I am aware that there are groups in Arizona advocating for RCV, but this will only lead to chaos, and we must ensure that our constituents have easy and fair access to the ballot box.”
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Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Melissa Julian awarded sanctions last week against Mark Finchem and his attorney Tom McCauley over Finchem’s lawsuit challenging his election loss in the Arizona Secretary of State’s race. Democrat Adrian Fontes, who won the race, asked the court for sanctions in December. Finchem and McCauley will be required to pay attorneys fees, the legal costs of Fontes’, and then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs’ office defending against the lawsuit. Finchem issued a statement after the ruling.
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Kari Lake filed her Petition for Review of a Special Action Decision of the Court of Appeals on Wednesday with the Arizona Supreme Court. The petition contended that the Arizona Court of Appeals panel ignored Arizona election laws, including previous court precedent, to dismiss her appeal. Lake’s petition stated, “The Opinion directly contradicts this Court’s admonition that “election statutes are mandatory, not ‘advisory,’ or else they would not be law at all,” citing the Arizona Supreme Court’s 1994 decision in Miller v. Picacho Elementary School District No. 33.
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The Arizona Legislature’s Senate Elections Committee and House Municipal Oversight & Elections Committee held a joint hearing on Thursday featuring testimony from several people involved in researching the voter disenfranchisement that occurred in 2020 and 2022. The testimony by Arizona forensic investigator Jacqueline Breger accused multiple statewide and county officials, including Governor Katie Hobbs and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, of racketeering connected to the Sinaloa Cartel. Democrats on those committees refused to attend the hearing.
Breger said she has been working with a law firm investigating multistate racketeering and corruption, but in the process discovered election fraud as well. She said neither she nor the attorney she works for are very political; he didn’t vote in the last two elections and she is a registered independent. While investigating racketeering involving the Sinaloa Cartel, their team accidentally discovered election fraud, she said, including finding that Maricopa County’s database is being infiltrated from the outside. “The Maricopa County database has absolutely no integrity whatsoever,” she declared. “Racketeering enterprises are inextricably intertwined with election fraud.”
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Gail Golec, who unsuccessfully ran for Maricopa County Supervisor last year, and 10 other Arizonans filed a complaint with Arizona Secretary of State (AZSOS) Adrian Fontes last month alleging violations of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) during last year’s midterm election, but the office rejected it. The complaint followed the procedures laid out in federal statutes, however the AZSOS responded and said the complaint didn’t establish any violations to investigate under HAVA.
Golec told The Arizona Sun Times that her team drafted the complaint based on the language in HAVA, so it didn’t make any sense that the AZSOS claimed the election discrepancies weren’t covered by HAVA. She said the problem is fundamentally how the AZSOS is viewing elections, which she believes is dismissive of real complaints. “It’s not ‘fair and equal’ elections, it’s ‘free and equal’ per Article II Section 1 of the Constitution,” she said. “We’re going to turn the lights on to stop the gaslighting and take this country back.”
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Arizona State Sen. Jake Hoffman’s (R-Queen Creek) sponsored bill, Senate Bill (SB) 1695, passed through the Senate Government Committee Thursday. The bill aims to prevent any possible voter disenfranchisement in future Arizona elections by allowing counties to redo an election.
“We will never stand, as Republicans here in the state of Arizona, for voter disenfranchisement,” said Hoffman during the committee. “I stand on the side of voters, not Republican voters. I stand on the side of all voters, whether they’re an Independent, whether they’re a Democrat, whether they’re a Green Party, a Libertarian, or a Republican. I stand on the side of every single voter. You should not ever be disenfranchised because election officials broke the law.”
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The Arizona Court of Appeals dismissed Kari Lake’s appeal of her election lawsuit on Thursday, stating that voters were not disenfranchised. Lake said she intends to appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court, as her opponents and Maricopa County officials praised the dismissal. Maricopa County election officials have frequently criticized Lake, causing some to doubt their impartiality. The Maricopa County Supervisors are responsible for overseeing elections on Election Day, while Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer has oversight of early balloting.
Clint Hickman, chair of the Maricopa County Supervisors, issued a statement on Thursday referring to Lake’s legal arguments as “questionable mathematics.” He said, “When a candidate for office asks a court to throw out valid votes, you have to wonder how committed to election integrity they really are.” He said Lake has been rejected “at the polls, when Arizona voters rejected her bid to be governor…”
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The Arizona Senate Election Committee heard testimony Monday from computer programmer Clinton Eugene Curtis about how susceptible voting machines are to manipulation. Curtis, a Democrat who previously worked as a programmer for NASA, DOD and other defense agencies, famously testified in 2007 to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee about how he programmed voting machines so he could manipulate them without being detected.
His presentation began with a clip of his 2007 testimony to Congress, where he said it only took 100 lines of code to change the results of an election. He said county election officials would not be able to detect it, unless they had access to the source code or could compare the count to the paper ballot count. He showed a second video clip, which compiled statements by prominent Democrats expressing their concerns on how voting machines are hackable.
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Abe Hamadeh’s election challenge for attorney general continues to wind its way through the court system, with his attorneys filing a reply in Mohave County Superior Court supporting their motion for a new trial on Monday. The Consolidated Reply in Support of Plaintiffs’ Motion for a New Trial addressed the claims brought up in the response from defendant Kris Mayes, who was declared the winner in the race. The lawsuit, which included the Republican National Committee and Republican Jeanne Kentch of Mohave County as plaintiffs, was also filed against Secretary of State Adrian Fontes.
Hamadeh’s reply brief, led by former Attorney General Election Integrity Unit civil attorney Jen Wright, emphasized the race’s closeness as a reason for a do-over.
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The Arizona Senate’s Election Committee continued the second part of a hearing on Monday that began last week, featuring testimony from election integrity proponents. Shelby Busch, the co-founder of We the People AZ, and Heather Honey of Verify Vote, went over five areas where their team found apparent law violations by Maricopa County in the 2022 election.
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The Arizona Senate’s Election Committee continued the second part of a hearing on Monday that began last week, featuring testimony from election integrity proponents. Shelby Busch, the co-founder of We the People AZ, and Heather Honey of Verify Vote, went over five areas where their team found apparent law violations by Maricopa County in the 2022 election.
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At a standing-room-only event Sunday, Kari Lake signaled she is not giving up her legal battle to install her as the rightful Arizona governor instead of Democrat Katie Hobbs.
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The former Election Integrity Unit civil attorney for the Arizona Attorney General’s Office is making it clear she does not believe the new Attorney General is rightfully in office. Jennifer Wright, who resigned before Democrat Kris Mayes took office — but who Mayes’ office claimed was fired to journalists, causing Wright to start the process for a libel lawsuit — has joined the legal team of Mayes’ opponent, Republican Abe Hamadeh, who is challenging the results of the extremely close election.
Wright tweeted that she initially turned down Hamadeh’s offer, but changed her mind “after @krismayes targeted me by falsely and unlawfully planting a hit on me on @azcentral.” She said “it became clear that left unchecked, the new admin intended to abuse their power.”
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After Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson dismissed Kari Lake’s lawsuit challenging her loss in the anomaly-plagued Maricopa County midterm election, Lake filed a notice of appeal. She also requested that the Arizona Supreme Court immediately take her case, bypassing the Arizona Court of Appeals for several reasons.
“We’re going to appeal this,” Lake told Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast Tuesday. “We think we have absolute merit with this lawsuit, and we’re going to appeal it and take it even higher.”
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As the second day of Kari Lake’s trial contesting Arizona’s gubernatorial election wrapped up Thursday, various election law attorneys provided their analysis on social media and videos. Some were optimistic that Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson would grant Lake relief, declaring her the winner or calling for a new election, but some were not as optimistic.
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Turning Point USA’s annual AmericaFest continued its second day in Phoenix on Sunday, featuring a long lineup of well-known conservatives. Some of the standouts Sunday included Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who is currently fighting the results of a botched election in Arizona which resulted in Democrat Katie Hobbs being named the winner, co-founder of PragerU and talk show host Dennis Prager, and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO).
The theme of many of the speakers was to stay positive and avoid the negativity and self-centeredness of the left, see the good in the country, and the values and institutions like marriage and children which formed it. Lake’s speech focused on voter disenfranchisement that occurred in her race, declaring, “My pronouns are ‘I won’” and “election integrity is the single most important issue of our lifetime.”
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The Election Integrity Network (EIN) has compiled a list of reports from election workers, poll watchers, and volunteer attorneys about questionable things they observed during Maricopa County’s midterm election, which experienced rampant tabulation machine and printer problems. EIN Chairman and election integrity attorney Cleta Mitchell denounced Maricopa County officials for “misinformation” regarding how bad the problems really were.
Cleta said, “Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates, Director of Elections Scott Jarrett, and County Recorder Steven Richer presided over a wholly mismanaged and disgraceful election on November 8 that has robbed countless voters of their political voices. Since the polls opened on Election Day, they have misled and misinformed the public about what really happened. But thanks to engaged citizens, we know the truth.”
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Republican Attorney General nominee Abe Hamadeh, along with the Republican National Committee, filed a lawsuit Tuesday against his Democrat opponent Kris Mayes and the counties of Arizona, alleging that errors in the 2022 General Election should prevent a winner from being named in this race.
“Arizonans demand answers and deserve transparency about the gross incompetence and mismanagement of the General Election by certain election officials. I will not stop fighting until ALL voters receive justice. See you in court,” Hamadeh tweeted when announcing the suit.
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Arizona Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake released a video Thursday sharing that she is not conceding in the race for governor and will continue to fight for the office.
“I can promise you one thing, this fight to save our Republic has just begun. I love you, Arizona, and I love you, America,” Lake said. “My resolve to fight for you [Arizona] is higher than ever.”
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Arizona Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake released a video Thursday sharing that she is not conceding in the race for governor and will continue to fight for the office.
“I can promise you one thing, this fight to save our Republic has just begun. I love you, Arizona, and I love you, America,” Lake said. “My resolve to fight for you [Arizona] is higher than ever.”
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