XPost: talk.politics.guns, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, sac.politics   
   XPost: alt.politics.republicans   
   From: f@m.uk   
      
   An Arizona judge on Tuesday rejected Democratic Governor-elect Katie   
   Hobbs’s request to sanction defeated Republican gubernatorial candidate   
   Kari Lake over her failed effort to overturn the state’s election results.   
      
   Lake had filed a lawsuit alleging voter fraud and challenging the counting   
   and certification of the November electoral contest in a bid to be   
   declared the winner despite a lack of evidence. The suit was rejected by   
   the Superior Court in Maricopa County on Saturday.   
      
   On Monday, Hobbs and Maricopa County deputy attorney asked the court to   
   sanction Lake and her attorneys, alleging that Lake had filed a   
   “groundless” lawsuit for a “frivolous pursuit.”   
      
   Sanctions are usually in the form of a financial penalty imposed by a   
   judge for violation of a court rule or misconduct. Hobbs had asked the   
   court to award her over $600,000 to compensate for fees and expenses   
   accrued in defending against Lake’s lawsuit.   
      
   Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson said in Tuesday’s   
   ruling that Lake’s claims in the lawsuit were not groundless.   
      
   “The fact that plaintiff (Lake) failed to meet the burden of clear and   
   convincing evidence ... does not equate to a finding that her claims were,   
   or were not, groundless and presented in bad faith,” Thomson wrote in the   
   judgment.   
      
   The lawsuit had targeted Hobbs, who is currently Arizona’s secretary of   
   state and becomes governor next week, along with top officials in Maricopa   
   County. Lake’s suit claimed “hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots   
   infected the election” in Maricopa, the state’s most populous county.   
      
   Lake, a former television news anchor, was one of the most high-profile   
   Republican candidates in the midterm elections to embrace former   
   Republican President Donald Trump’s false claims of voter fraud in 2020.   
      
   She lost the governor’s race to Hobbs but refused to concede and continued   
   making unconfirmed claims about election improprieties on her Twitter   
   feed.   
      
   Lake was one of the most prominent of the Trump-aligned Republican   
   candidates who lost battleground state races in the midterm elections.   
      
      
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)