A judge declined to issue sanctions against Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake after a lawsuit she filed challenging the midterm election results was tossed.
According to CNN, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson ordered Lake to pay Democratic Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs $33,040.50 as compensation for serving as an expert witness.
Hobbs, who gets sworn in next month, and her attorneys requested nearly $700,000 in fees and legal costs.
Thompson in his ruling said that “experts who testified in support of Lake provided analysis that does not nearly approach the degree of precision … needed to conclude that the election results were tainted,” per ABC News.
In a separate filing, Hobbs asked the Maricopa County superior court to impose sanctions on Lake. According to The Guardian, the secretary of state used Lake’s latest tweet as the basis of the claim.
In the post, Lake’s account quoted Rachel Alexander, who wrote an opinion piece for Townhall.com.
“The dismissal of Kari Lake’s election lawsuit shows voter disenfranchisement no longer matters,” the now-deleted tweet said, per The Hill. “Legal experts believe his decision (by Judge Thompson) was ghostwritten, they suspect top leftwing attorneys like Marc Elias emailed him what to say.”
Thompson didn’t impose sanctions because even though Lake failed to show “convincing evidence,” it didn’t mean her claims were “groundless and brought in bad faith,” he said.
Last week, the judge dismissed eight out of the 10 claims Lake made. The ruling allowed her team to inspect randomly selected ballots cast and printed on election day, as I previously reported for the Deseret News.
Lake lost to Hobbs by about 17,000 votes. Her lawyers plan to appeal the ruling, claiming as many as 29,000 Republican voters struggled to cast their ballot because of printer failures and long lines.