Arizona’s elections criminals continue to weaponize court Sanctions and Motions for Attorneys’ Fees against their opponents for daring to question fraudulent elections and shady election procedures.
This is the tactic we have seen to stop election-related challenges dead in their tracks and “send a message” to or intimidate attorneys. This is all in the interest of the government ruling as the supreme authority on elections and suppressing the rights of citizens.
The Gateway Pundit reported just before Kari Lake’s historic trial in December that corrupt Obama Judge John Tuchi in Arizona ruled in favor of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and sanctioned Kari Lake and Mark Finchem for exercising their right to petition Maricopa County’s procedures before the election. Tuchi waited months until after the General Election was stolen to do this.
Tuchi even admitted that this order was intended to “send a message” to those who file what he considers “baseless” lawsuits in the future.
Kari Lake and Mark Finchem argued that the voting machines are “potentially unsecure, lack adequate audit capacity, fail to meet minimum statutory requirements, and deprive voters of the right to have their votes counted and reported in an accurate, auditable, legal, and transparent process.”
However, as we saw on Election Day in the Midterm Election, voting machine failures and tabulation issues led to massive and unprecedented voter disenfranchisement at the polls. It was an uncertifiable disaster on Election Day when voting machines and printers suddenly stopped working at 60% of voting centers the moment the polls opened. Republican voters were forced to wait in extremely long lines, turned away from the polls, or told to deposit their ballots in the questionable “box 3” for misread ballots.
Following the trial, Katie Hobbs and Maricopa County filed Motions for Sanctions and Applications for Attorneys’ Fees against Kari Lake and her attorneys. Collectively, the two parties were seeking over $600,000 to bankrupt Kari Lake’s legal fund and discourage another election lawsuit from ever going to trial.
A RINO Doug Ducey-appointed judge recently dismissed Finchem’s lawsuit despite clear collusion and election interference between Katie Hobbs, Maricopa County, and Twitter, and intentional machine failures at 60% of polling locations in Maricopa County. The judge then awarded Sanctions against Finchem because he dared to fight an obviously corrupt election in the unfair justice system.
Now, crooked, illegitimate Governor Katie Hobbs and questionably elected Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes are once again weaponizing their bogus sanctions against Kari Lake in the Arizona Supreme Court over a legitimate claim from Kari Lake.
Maricopa County cannot provide a chain of custody for an amount of ballots that is TWICE over the margin of victory in the Gubernatorial race.
They don't have paperwork or receipts.
All they have is their word.
And their word is as good as garbage. https://t.co/uz1exJId06
— Kari Lake War Room (@KariLakeWarRoom) April 8, 2023
Arizona Sun Times reports,
After the Arizona Supreme Court remanded Kari Lake’s election contest back to the trial court to reconsider the signature verification problems and began considering sanctions against her, Lake responded with a new pleading. Lake filed a Petitioner’s Opposition to Motion for Sanctions and Cross-Motion for a Procedural Order for Leave to File a Motion for Reconsideration of the Denial of her Petition for Review on Wednesday in the Arizona Supreme Court.
Lake told The Arizona Sun Times, “We took the sanctions briefing ordered by the AZ SCT and flipped it into a request for reconsideration of the 35K ballot injection issue at Runbeck.” Lake said in her response that she wanted the court to consider the filing a “motion for reconsideration of the Court’s denial of review on this chain-of-custody issue.”
She was referring to her claim that 35,563 early ballots showed up at Maricopa County’s third-party ballot processing company, Runbeck Election Systems.
Katie Hobbs and Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes filed motions asking that Lake be sanctioned for alleging in her brief “the undisputed fact that 35,563 unaccounted for ballots were added to the total of ballots at a third party processing facility.”
The Arizona Supreme Court appeared to disagree with Lake on the claim, stating in their opinion last month, “The record does not reflect that 35,563 unaccounted ballots were added to the total count.”
Citing Arizona case law, Lake’s pleading went over the requirements for awarding sanctions, including “for which there is no “colorable legal argument … about which 2 reasonable attorneys could differ,” “a claim for an improper motive,” and “not ‘supportable by any reasonable legal theory.’”
She stated, “[T]he respondents seeking sanctions have not even attempted to show any evidence rebutting Lake’s claims regarding the 35,379 ballots for which Runbeck has no record of receiving.” Lake pointed out that unlike government officials, private entities like Runbeck are not entitled to “a presumption that they acted in good faith.”
Lake laid out the problems discovered, revealing a lack of chain of custody for the 35,563 “early ballots injected into the election at Runbeck.”
She observed, “Proper chain of custody would allow Maricopa to detect even one inserted ballot.”
Lake said, “That injection went undetected because Maricopa violated mandatory chain-of-custody requirements.” Violating chain of custody is a class 2 misdemeanor under Arizona law.
There was no record of delivery by Runbeck for those ballots, Lake said. She noted that Hobbs “cited two unique types of Maricopa chain-of-custody forms in her answering brief.” However, “the number of early ballots recorded on the Runbeck Receipt of Delivery forms dated November 8-9, 2022, totaled 263,379 ballots.” In contrast, there were “298,942 Election Day early ballots recorded on the Runbeck Scan Receipts, that is a discrepancy of 35,563 more ballots scanned than ballots received.”
Hobbs claimed that Maricopa County would know of any ballot “inserted or rejected or lost in any part of the process,” but Lake said Hobbs didn’t “cite to any other chain-of-custody forms in her answering brief that would explain the discrepancy.”
Additionally, Lake pointed out another violation of the law.
“Maricopa was required to count the number of ballots when the ballot containers were opened at MTEC on Election Day — but Maricopa admittedly disregarded that 6 mandatory requirement on Election Day ‘due to the large volume of early ballot packets dropped at polling places that day,’” she said.
Maricopa County admitted in its answering brief that it didn’t count the ballots before delivering them to MCTEC.
Lake asked the court not to uphold “the lower court’s rewriting the clear requirement mandated in the Election Procedure Manual to count and record the number ballots retrieved from each drop box when opening the secure containers in which the ballots arrive at MTEC, to allow, instead, counting ballots elsewhere, long after opening the secure containers.”
Lake noted that Hobbs nor the other parties ever requested oral argument or leave to file a sur-reply in order to refute her assertion about the inserted ballots. Hobbs accused Lake of only bringing up the inserted ballots late into the legal process in her petition for review with the Arizona Supreme Court, but Lake said that was “flatly false.”
An Arizona election attorney told The Sun Times this week that the trial court judge should consider recusing himself due to the perception of bias. He said regarding Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson, “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.”
Additionally, illegitimate Attorney General Kris Mayes and Adrian Fontes weaponized sanctions against Abraham Hamadeh, whose race is the closest in Arizona history.
Kris Mayes initially filed for Attorneys’ fees and requested Sanctions against Hamadeh and his attorneys, arguing that Hamadeh and his counsel “pursue[d] these groundless claims” and “prosecuted this action in bad faith” and that Plaintiffs and their counsel ‘unreasonably expanded’ and ‘delayed]’ the proceeding.”
Hamadeh responded to this claim stating, “This matter was filed, there was a return hearing, a hearing on a motion to dismiss, a hearing on inspection of ballots, an evidentiary hearing, and the Court ruled from the bench, all in less than 14 days – significantly less than the time than a Plaintiff typically has to serve a complaint under the Arizona Rules of Civil Procedure, let alone fully litigate a case.” Hamadeh further stated, “Plaintiffs brought this case because they believed in good faith that Plaintiff Hamadeh won the 2022 Attorney General’s race and they would be able to prove it at trial.” Maricopa County’s attorneys even agreed with this statement.
Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen and Arizona House Speaker Ben Toma also filed an Amicus Brief in support of a New Trial on behalf of Hamadeh and against the Sanctions and Attorneys’ Fees.
Adrian Fontes also filed a Joinder in Kris Mayes’ Motion for Attorneys’ Fees.
The Gateway Pundit recently reported that The Mohave County Superior Court ordered Oral Arguments on May 16 in response to Abe Hamadeh’s Motion for New Trial in his lawsuit contesting the Arizona Attorney General’s race which was decided by just 280 votes. It does not appear from the Court’s order that the Motions for Attorneys’ Fees or Sanctions will be considered on May 16, but the corrupt Defendants will likely try to bring these issues forward.
Abe Hamadeh attorney Jen Wright told The Gateway Pundit, “The weaponization of sanctions is problematic, and sanctions should only be granted in extreme circumstances, not just when parties feel inconvenienced.” Wright continued, “Kris Mayes demanding sanctions against Abe Hamadeh exemplifies the weaponization of sanctions — if the closest statewide race in Arizona history cannot be questioned, Arizona’s election contest statutes are completely meaningless.”
Hamadeh also called out his opponents for their “arrogance” in requesting sanctions, saying, “They do not represent the people, they only serve their special interests.”
Maricopa County believe the closest race in Arizona history deserves no scrutiny and any questioning of the results is worthy of sanctions. The arrogance of its ‘leadership’ continues to disturb me.
They do not represent the people, they only serve their special interests.
— Abe Hamadeh (@AbrahamHamadeh) April 24, 2023
“Arizonans are becoming apathetic. They no longer feel they have a voice in government because they think their votes don’t matter and believe the courts offer no recourse,” Hamadeh tweeted.
Arizonans are becoming apathetic. They no longer feel they have a voice in government because they think their votes don’t matter and believe the courts offer no recourse. I’m fighting our election lawsuit to restore confidence in our system and to rebuild trust with the people.
— Abe Hamadeh (@AbrahamHamadeh) April 25, 2023
This is the tactic of an un-American government to silence its political opponents.
