Lake to appeal again, she isn’t sanctioned but Finchem is 

Kari Lake has, once again, filed her intent to appeal the outcome of her bid to overturn the results of Arizona’s 2022 gubernatorial election, after it failed in Maricopa County Superior Court. 

This was the second time that Lake, a Republican who lost by 17,000 votes to Democrat Katie Hobbs, challenged the results of the election, lost that challenge and decided to appeal it. 

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson shot down Lake’s second challenge on May 22, following a three-day trial during which the judge determined Lake failed to prove that the election was stolen from her through the county’s failure to verify voter signatures. 

Lake filed her intent to appeal his ruling to the Arizona Court of Appeals on May 31.  

This trial was the result of Lake’s multiple appeals of her initial election challenge, which Thompson shot down in December. Lake appealed all the way to the Arizona Supreme Court, which generally agreed with Thompson and the appeals court that Lake’s claims should be dismissed — except for one claim about signature verification on early ballots, which it remanded back to Thompson. 

Maricopa County, along with the other defendants in the case — Hobbs and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes —  asked that Thompson sanction Lake and her lawyers for “intentionally misrepresenting facts in front of the court.” Thompson on May 26 denied that request, writing that Lake’s failure to prove a claim did not mean her case was not made in good faith, as the defendants argued. 

On the same day that Thompson denied sanctions for Lake and her attorneys, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Melissa Julian ordered more than $48,000 in sanctions for failed Secretary of State candidates Mark Finchem and his lawyer, for bringing a claim to the court alleging misconduct in the 2022 election and asking for a new election in the race for secretary of state. 

The judge ordered Finchem to pay $40,272 to cover Fontes’ attorney fees to defend himself in the case. She also ordered Finchem’s attorney, Daniel McAuley III, to pay $7,434 in attorney fees for then-Secretary of State Hobbs, who was also named as a defendant in the suit. In her ruling, the judge called Finchem’s case “groundless.”