Kari Lake’s Election Lawsuit Just Took One Step Forward—And Two Steps Back

Following Republican Kari Lake’s loss in Arizona’s gubernatorial race, her seemingly dead-end quest to overturn the contest’s results took one step forward and two steps backward Monday, after a judge allowed a slim section of her election lawsuit to proceed. The ruling came just over a month after the election’s delayed results were called in favor of Democrat Katie Hobbs, prompting Lake, a former local news anchor who is adamantly pro-Trump, to launch her own quasi–“Stop the Steal” effort by filing a 70-page lawsuit listing a number of dubious objections earlier this month.

While Maricopa County Superior Court judge Peter Thompson dismissed 8 out of the 10 claims filed by Lake’s attorneys, two allegations are now headed to a trial. One approved claim alleges that a Maricopa County election employee tilted the race by tampering with ballot printers, causing “identifiable” votes to go missing. The other alleges that Maricopa County, the most populous county in Arizona, violated its stated election procedures regarding the chain of custody for mail-in ballots—an issue, she claims, that led to illegal ballots being tallied. Thompson has given Lake approval to provide evidence backing this latter claim, which the judge described as a dispute of fact, not law.

“Evidence is not before the Court at the motion to dismiss stage—pleadings, made under the auspices of Rule 11 (the rule governing sanctions) are,” the judge explained, according to the Arizona Republic. “Accordingly, Plaintiff must show at trial that the BOD printer malfunctions were intentional, and directed to affect the results of the election, and that such actions did actually affect the outcome.”

Given the stipulations outlined by Thompson, attorney Marc Elias, whose team is representing Hobbs, is confident that the suit will go nowhere. “Proving intentional wrongdoing and that it affected the outcome of the election will be impossible for Lake,” Elias tweeted Monday.

Nevertheless, Lake seems assured that she will come out victorious in court. “They have built a house of cards here in Maricopa County,” she said during a Turning Point USA conference over the weekend. “I think they’re all wondering what I’m gonna do. I’ll tell you what, I’m not just gonna knock that house of cards over. We’re going to burn it to the ground.”