(FreedomBeacon.com)- Arizona Governor-Elect Katie Hobbs recently joined a motion put forth by Maricopa County that is seeking sanctions against Republican Kari Lake, who was her opponent in the race.
Lake filed a lawsuit that challenged the results of the gubernatorial race from November, which saw Hobbs being declared the winner of the race by roughly one-half percent. Peter Thompson, a judge in Maricopa County Superior Court, ruled against that challenge, though.
Thompson, who was appointed by former Republican Governor Jan Brewer, said the court wasn’t presented with “clear and convincing” evidence of the widespread misconduct that Lake was alleging had an influence in the midterm election results.
Lake, who is currently Arizona’s secretary of state, put forth claims that issues with ballot printers at some of polling places during Election Day happened due to intentional misconduct. The witnesses that Lake included in that complaint, though, said they didn’t have any knowledge of that, according to Thompson.
Earlier this week, Hobbs asked the court to give her almost $37,000 in attorneys’ fees as well as expenses for court proceedings that revolved around the challenge Lake put forward.
Hobbs hired lawyer Andrew Gaona of Coppersmith Brockelman PLC to be her legal representation during an expedited election case that “required extensive work by counsel in a very short period,” according to her filing.
The attorneys had to prepare for the possible evidentiary hearing, participate in the actual evidentiary hearing — which took two days — and draft up motions to dismiss the case outright.
As her recent court filing states:
“As a result of the efforts of the Secretary’s counsel and the other Defendants, the Court denied the Plaintiff’s remarkable request for relief in its entirety. Accordingly, the Secretary prevailed, and achieved a total victory in this litigation.
“For the foregoing reasons, the Secretary respectfully requests that the Court award her $36,990 in reasonable attorneys’ fees and ‘expenses’ incurred in this action.”
The court filing breaks down the fees. There were 94.3 hours that were billed by CP, which totaled $31,090. There was $5,900 more that went to services for retaining Ryan Macias, who was an expert witness in the case.
Maricopa County officials criticized Lake over her “frivolous” and “groundless” lawsuit that she filed once the election was certified. As the county wrote in its filing:
“Before a single vote was counted in the 2022 general election, Kari Lake publicly stated that she would accept the results of the gubernatorial election only if she were the wining candidate.
“But, she has not simply failed to publicly acknowledge the election results. Instead, she filed a groundless, seventy-page election contest lawsuit against the Governor-Elect, the Secretary of State, and Maricopa County and several of its elected officials and employees (but no other county or its employees), thereby dragging them and this Court into this frivolous pursuit.”
The county concluded in its filing:
“Enough really is enough. It is past time to end unfounded attacks on elections and unwarranted accusations against elected officials.”
