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An
Arizona judge on Saturday rejected Lake's lawsuit that
challenged the counting and certification of the November
electoral contest in a bid to be declared the winner despite a
lack of evidence of voter fraud.
Hobbs joined a motion 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," court documents showed.
"Enough really is enough," Liddy wrote in the motion filed on
Monday. "It is past time to end unfounded attacks on elections
and unwarranted accusations against elections officials."
Maricopa County's motion had "no basis in law or fact," Lake's
lawyers wrote in a response filed Monday evening, asking the
court to deny the request for sanctions.
"Trust in the election process is not furthered by punishing
those who bring legitimate claims as plaintiff did here," the
court document filed by Lake's lawyers said. "In fact,
sanctioning plaintiff would have the opposite effect."
The sanctions would be in the form of a financial penalty
imposed by a judge for violation of a court rule or misconduct.
Lake's lawsuit had targeted Hobbs, who is currently Arizona's
secretary of state and becomes governor next week, along with
top officials in Maricopa County. Her suit claimed "hundreds of
thousands of illegal ballots infected the election" in Maricopa,
the state's most populous county.
In a separate court filing, Hobbs also asked the Superior Court
in Maricopa County to award her over $600,000 to compensate for
fees and expenses accrued in defending against Lake's lawsuit.
Lake, a former television news anchor, was one of the most
high-profile Republican candidates in the midterm elections to
embrace former Republican President Donald Trump's false claims
of voter fraud in 2020.
She lost the governor's race to Hobbs but refused to concede and
continued making unconfirmed claims about election improprieties
on her Twitter feed.
Lake was one of the most prominent of the Trump-aligned
Republican candidates who lost battleground state races in the
midterm elections.
(Reporting by Ismail Shakil in Ottawa; Editing by Mary Milliken
and Alistair Bell)
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