Arizona Governor-elect Katie Hobbs (D) asked a court on Monday to sanction her defeated challenger, Kari Lake (R) over a failed lawsuit to overturn election results.
On Christmas Eve, Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson rejected Lake’s arguments following a two-day trial in which her attorneys asserted that misconduct during the November midterm had denied Lake a victory and that it resulted in the wrong person—Katie Hobbs—was elected Arizona’s next governor.
Lake’s lawsuit had challenged the counting and certification of the votes, despite a lack of election fraud. Thompson ruled she failed to prove her assertion that “hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots infected the election” in Maricopa County, home to more than 60% of Arizona’s voters.
Hobbs joined a motion filed Monday by Maricopa County for sanctions on Lake and her attorneys in which the county’s deputy attorney Thomas P. Liddy wrote Lake filed a “groundless” lawsuit for a “frivolous pursuit,” according to court documents.
“Enough really is enough,” Liddy wrote in the motion. “It is past time to end unfounded attacks on elections and unwarranted accusations against elections officials.”
In a separate court filing, Hobbs also asked the Superior Court in Maricopa County to award her more than $600,000 to compensate for fees and expenses accrued in defending against Lake’s lawsuit, which had targeted Hobbs, who is currently Arizona’s secretary of state. She will be sworn in as governor on January 5, along with top officials in Maricopa County.
Lawyers for Lake countered that the county’s motion on Monday had “no basis in law or fact,” and asked the court to deny the request for sanctions.
Lake, meanwhile, has deleted a tweet in which she quoted right-wing commentator Rachel Alexander, saying that Judge Thompson’s decision had been “ghostwritten, they suspect top left-wing attorneys like Marc Elias emailed him what to say.”
According to reports, Lake deleted the tweet after her staff reminded her Judge Thompson would be the one to decide whether or not to sanction her.
Lake, a former television news anchor, was one of the most prominent of the Republican party’s 291 election deniers—those who denied or questioned the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election—who ran for key offices in the 2022 midterm elections across the country.
