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“And that claims loads,” Lindell said whereas introducing Lake for an look on his speak present. “It says loads about Kari.”
It certain does.
Lake, a former longtime local news anchor at a Fox station in Phoenix, has turn out to be the early frontrunner within the 2022 Republican major to succeed term-limited Gov. Doug Ducey, early polls and anecdotal evidence suggest. Along with her excessive profile and her polished public talking, Lake has jumped forward of the sphere by becoming a member of Lindell in pushing lies about what occurred within the free and truthful 2020 election she falsely describes as “stolen.”
Lake’s phrases have raised issues amongst unbiased elections consultants in regards to the equity of future elections in a key swing state. It’s potential, although removed from sure, that Arizona’s 2024 presidential election will probably be performed with two aggressive 2020 deniers on the helm: Lake as governor and state representative Mark Finchem as Secretary of State.
Each of them have been endorsed by former President Donald Trump. And like Trump, Lake has not solely disseminated false claims in regards to the election however referred to as for motion based mostly on these false claims.
Lake has baselessly advocated the imprisonment of state Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who’s now working for governor, over unspecified election crimes; there may be merely no signal Hobbs broke the regulation. Lake has additionally pushed for the imprisonment of unspecified journalists she claims have instructed lies in regards to the election and different topics.
And Lake has said she wouldn’t have licensed Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in Arizona if she had been governor. She additionally continues to demand the decertification of the Arizona end result at the moment, although that may be a legal impossibility.
Lake’s Republican opponents should not precisely standing agency within the protection of the 2020 election. As of early September, none of her rivals have been prepared to answer an Arizona Republic reporter who requested them who received the 2020 election in Arizona.
However Lake’s election rhetoric stands out for its frequency and its depth.
Kim Fridkin, an Arizona State College professor of political science, stated that Lake “pushing lies in regards to the consequence of the election and advocating imprisonment for her doubtless opponent is harmful.” She stated such phrases couldn’t solely lower public religion within the integrity of elections however may assist encourage disgruntled residents to violent motion just like the January 6 revolt. “I’m involved on numerous dimensions,” Fridkin stated.
Lake’s marketing campaign didn’t reply to a request for remark. This is a take a look at among the false claims she has made in regards to the 2020 election, each generally and in Arizona.
False claims in regards to the 2020 election generally
Falsely stated Biden did not get the votes he bought: Lake claimed on Twitter this week that Joe Biden didn’t truly get 81 million votes in 2020. Biden did, finish of story.
Falsely referred to as the election corrupt: On Twitter in September, Lake endorsed a lie from Trump’s spokeswoman that Democrats rig American elections utilizing mail-in ballots. (Full nonsense; there is no such thing as a signal any such scheme occurred in 2020.) And in an interview this month with a conservative commentator, Lake supplied up a obscure conspiracy principle in regards to the motivation behind the (nonexistent) rigging of the 2020 election.
“They needed the MAGA motion to go away, and that is why they pushed the shoddy, shady, corrupt election on us. They needed MAGA and all the things President Trump stood for to go away,” she stated.
Baselessly forged doubt on Biden taking leads in key states: In an interview with one other conservative host in August, Lake scoffed at the truth that Biden took the lead in swing states the place Trump led earlier than many People went to sleep on Election Night time. Lake stated sarcastically: “It is magic!”
Actually, it is so explicable that it is boring. All that occurred was that states continued to count votes. As had been extensively predicted earlier than Election Day, Biden tended to achieve floor in states that counted mail-in ballots final — Trump discouraged his voters from voting by mail — and in states that wanted time to rely some votes from populous cities, which lean Democratic.
Trump truly gained on Biden in Arizona after Election Night time, although he ended up dropping there.
Promoted Dominion conspiracy theories: Whereas Lake was nonetheless employed as an area information anchor final November, she posted a Twitter thread amplifying false conspiracy theories that legal professional Sidney Powell had uttered on Fox Enterprise in regards to the election know-how firm Dominion Voting Methods.
Lake referred to as Powell’s phrases “sobering.” However Powell’s claims about Dominion know-how altering giant numbers of votes within the US, Venezuela and different nations — which prompted Dominion to file a defamation lawsuit in opposition to her — by no means had any foundation in any respect.
In an interview 9 months later, Lake vouched for the accuracy of Lindell, whose conspiratorial tales have been constantly incorrect and who has additionally been sued by Dominion.
False claims about Arizona particularly
Falsely claimed Trump is the actual Arizona winner: In August, Lake predicted we’d study that “President Trump was the actual winner of Arizona” — the place he truly lost by more than 10,000 votes — and that “the outcomes that got on Election Night time and the weeks following weren’t solely inaccurate, they have been wildly inaccurate.”
Lake pinned her hopes on a shambolic Republican-commissioned election review in Biden-favoring Maricopa County … which ended up releasing a vote count nearly identical to the county’s own count. So then, in an interview with a conservative commentator in September, Lake baselessly claimed that Biden solely bought extra votes than Trump as a result of lots of the ballots have been “fraudulent.”
“It is like having a child who cheats at Monopoly sport when the entire household comes collectively at Thanksgiving, and everybody sees him dishonest, and also you — ‘Ohh-kay, you received.’ However everybody is aware of he did not win, as a result of he cheated,” Lake stated.
In actuality: Biden legitimately received Arizona and the election; Biden did not cheat; the partisan evaluate didn’t exhibit fraud.
Forged baseless aspersions on Arizona election practices: Whether or not out of dishonesty or ignorance, Lake has repeatedly instructed that Maricopa County has dedicated election wrongdoing it hasn’t.
Most notably, Lake has blasted Maricopa County for supposedly deleting elections recordsdata, even claiming the county’s conduct was “legal,” with out mentioning that the recordsdata in query have been actually backed up.
“We nonetheless have all recordsdata from the 2020 election,” Stephen Richer, the elected Republican recorder for Maricopa County, instructed CNN on Friday. “They have been archived from the principle election server onto backup drives in early 2021 to start making ready for the assorted jurisdictional elections we now have performed all through this yr.”
In a tweet this month, Lake instructed one thing was amiss about the truth that Maricopa County knowledgeable her she was being despatched a mail-in poll for an area 2021 election though she had requested previous to the 2020 election to be taken off the checklist of mail voters.
Nope. As others quickly explained on Twitter, and Maricopa County explains on its website, that is an all-mail election during which even voters not on the checklist are despatched ballots.
Baseless declare in regards to the California recall
Lake has even adopted a conspiratorial stance in regards to the 2021 California gubernatorial recall election that Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom won in a landslide.
“We simply noticed what occurred in California. You’ll be able to’t inform me that Newsom received by a higher margin, now, than he did when he was first elected. That is an impossibility contemplating what’s occurred in California,” Lake said in a September interview with One America Information.
Actually, it is fully potential. And it is value noting that, as extra California ballots have been counted in late September and early October, Newsom’s margin of victory on the yes-or-no recall query has shrunken slightly from its preliminary measurement — to turn out to be practically equivalent to his 61.9% to 38.1% margin of victory over a Republican opponent within the 2018 election.
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