Kari Lake claims she shouldn't have to pay for defaming election official

Capitol Media Services

PHOENIX — Kari Lake is advancing a new legal theory why she doesn’t owe anything to Stephen Richer for making defamatory statements about his handling of elections:

His 2024 bid for a new term as Maricopa County recorder is doing just fine financially despite all that.

Attorney Tim La Sota, who is representing Lake in Richer’s defamation lawsuit against her, cited the county recorder’s claim that he already raised $250,000 in his reelection bid. By contrast, La Sota said, Richer raised less than $310,000 in his entire effort to first get elected in 2020.

That’s important, La Sota said, because Richer, in filing the defamation suit, claimed Lake’s comments “cut (him) off from Republican networks and donors who once supported his career and future ambitions in public office.’’

Even if Richer’s standing among his fellow Republicans took a hit, La Sota said, it may have nothing to do with anything Lake said or did. Instead, he said, it could just as easily have been his statements criticizing former President Donald Trump.

Lake agreed to a default judgment that she will not contest Richer’s claim of defamation, but she’s trying to minimize the only remaining issue in the case: How much she owes him in damages.

La Sota, in a letter to Richer’s lawyers, is contesting the recorder’s claim that Lake’s statements — and the public response to them — took a “toll on Richer’s physical and mental health and required him to spend time and money on additional medical treatment and medication.’’

“We have severe doubts about the veracity of this allegation,’’ La Sota said. Since Richer raised the issue, he said the recorder should voluntarily consent to a physical or mental examination.

And if he won’t, La Sota said he would seek a court order.

Richer’s attorney, Daniel Maynard, said a legal response will be filed to all of this.

Lake, despite defaulting on the lawsuit, continues to insist the claim has no merit. La Sota said Richer sued for “improper purposes.’’

One, La Sota said, was Richer’s intent to interfere with Lake’s campaign for the U.S. Senate “by using vexatious litigation to drain Kari Lake, the leading Republican candidate, of financial resources.’’ The other, he said, is impeding her campaign “by keeping her off the campaign trail and creating a barrage of negative media hit pieces.’’

But there’s a timing problem with that theory. Richer filed suit on June 22, 2023. Lake did not announce her intention to run for Senate for nearly another four months.

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What this all comes down to is how much money Lake, her political action committee and her campaign committee owe Richer.

His lawsuit said Lake made two clearly false statements about the way he ran the 2022 election.

One was that he intentionally printed 19-inch images on 20-inch ballots, a situation that resulted in the on-site tabulators at many voting centers being unable to read the votes. The other was that he inserted about 300,000 “bogus’’ ballots into the 2022 election count.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Jay Adleman found sufficient allegations Lake acted with “actual malice’’ in making the statements. The Court of Appeals and Arizona Supreme Court refused to intercede.

That eventually led to Lake defaulting last month, saying she wanted to instead focus on her Senate campaign. That essentially was an admission that what Richer alleged is true, leaving only the issue of damages to be litigated.

On the surface, La Sota is saying there really are none based on Richer’s successful fundraising.

He said the burden is now on Richer to prove how he was harmed. That includes showing that any damage to Richer’s reputation was caused by anything Lake did or said, La Sota said. He contends there are plenty of other reasons the recorder suffered what he said in his complaint was a “decline in career prospects.’’

Consider, La Sota said, statements Richer has made about Trump, at one point calling the former president “unhinged’’ for accusing the county of deleting an elections database.

“Whether Richer likes it or not, President Trump is the dominant figure in today’s Republican Party,’’ and criticizing him “will always alienate the party’s base,” Lake’s attorney said.

La Sota also said if Richer and his family were subject to threats of violence and death — one of the lawsuit’s claims — he’ll have a hard time proving that is related to Lake.

“Richer must be consumed by either naivety or megalomania (or both) to assume that he’s the one politician in the history of the United States subjected to harsh criticism and even threats of violence,’’ he wrote.

“Even if Kari Lake beamed her criticisms of Richer via mental telepathy to every citizen of Arizona,” La Sota continued, “no expert witness or quantum of proof can ever satisfy Richer’s obligation to prove that Lake, and only Kari Lake, is the proximate cause of Richer’s alleged harms, because those harms are part and parcel of being an elected official.”

Lake’s attorney did concede there may be one cost Richer incurred that could be quantified: The recorder’s claim that he and his wife spent “thousands of dollars’’ installing additional security features at home. But La Sota sniffed at that being a basis for the kind of lawsuit he filed.

“In other words, Richer had to pay some bucks for a home security system — which is what any other family in Arizona would have to spend,’’ he said. “We assume he saved the receipts.’’