Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake has said that the U.S. will turn into Venezuela if “honest elections” aren’t restored as she continues to challenge her loss.
Lake’s lawsuit challenging her defeat in the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election has been expedited and will be heard by the Arizona Court of Appeals on February 1.
The Republican discussed the case with Turning Point USA founder and president Charlie Kirk in an interview she shared on her Twitter account on Friday.
Kirk said that Lake could find it difficult to prove “malice” on the part of election officials because they could say: “Well, I’m just such an idiot, I don’t know how to run it.”
He then discussed the December recount in Arizona’s Attorney General race that found Kris Mayes receiving 280 more votes than Republican Abe Hamadeh, which was a decrease in her 511 vote lead prior to the recount.
Kirk asked Lake whether this could be used to demand hand recounts in Arizona counties as part of her ongoing lawsuit, to which Lake responded that “it’s difficult to overhaul the whole case. They won’t allow that.”
“But we are trying to bring new things in,” she said. “And we have a lot of new evidence coming our way every day. And this is how these election cases work, Charlie. So much of it is gathering evidence after the fact. And we were able to pull a great case together in the days after the election.”
Lake noted that a judge in Maricopa County had agreed to hear only two of her counts challenging the election but she expressed optimism about her chances in the superior courts, including the Arizona Supreme Court.
“There’s a boatload of evidence in our favor,” Lake said. “And we just need a judge to wake up and realize what’s on the line here. And if we don’t restore honest elections right now our country will turn into a Venezuela.”
Venezuela has often been cited by conservatives as an example of an authoritarian socialist state. The country’s 2018 presidential election was widely criticized as a sham.
Lake’s lawsuit challenging the gubernatorial election was thrown out in December following a two-day trial by Maricopa County superior court judge Peter Thompson. He rejected Lake’s claim that there had been problems with ballot printers at polling stations on November 8.
She appealed to both the Arizona Court of Appeals and the Arizona Supreme Court. The Supreme Court denied the petition and asked that the Court of Appeals to hear Lake’s case first.
Newsweek has contacted Lake’s team for comment on her pending appeal.
Lake’s opponent, Democrat and former Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, has already been sworn in as governor of Arizona. She defeated Lake by more than 17,000 votes and in a court filing on Friday, December 16, a lawyer for Hobbs called claims in Lake’s lawsuit “rank speculation.”
“Kari Lake lost the Governor’s race to Katie Hobbs by 17,117 votes,” attorney Alexis Danneman wrote.
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