PHOENIX (CN) — A Maricopa County voting official accused by defeated Republican Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake of sabotaging ballots to prevent her from winning has now sued her for defamation.
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer sued Lake Thursday in a complaint filed in Maricopa County Superior Court. Richer said in the suit that Lake falsely accused him of tampering with ballots and injecting thousands of “illegal” early, mail-in ballots into the vote count.
“Defendants knew or recklessly disregarded the falsity of those accusations. Courts at every level of the Arizona judiciary have concluded that defendants have no evidence to support their wild claims,” Richer states. “But defendants continued to spread these egregious and harmful falsities to further their own agendas — and line their own pockets — at Richer’s expense.”
Richer, represented by Daniel Maynard, a Phoenix-based attorney at Maynard Cronin Erickson & Curran, brings the five claims of defamation against Lake, her campaign organization and the Save Arizona Fund, a fundraising organization supporting Lake’s political efforts.
Richer, a Republican, says in the suit that he has faced professional backlash and that he and his family have received threats of violence and death for his purported part in “stealing” the Arizona elections.
Lake, endorsed by Donald Trump during her campaign for governor, ultimately lost the race to Democrat Katie Hobbs in 2022.
Lake campaigned on a platform of widespread election fraud and other conspiracy theories and had alleged the election was stolen before votes were even counted. After refusing to concede, Lake filed a lawsuit against several state and elections officials, including Richer.
Lake, now rumored to be gunning for a spot as Donald Trump’s 2024 running mate or for a U.S. Senate seat in Arizona, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Following her election loss, Lake claimed widely that Richer and Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates deliberately misprinted the Arizona general election ballots so that they would be spit out by tabulator machines. She also alleged that Richer included 300,000 illegal ballots in the final count.
“Lake made the false ballot size sabotage and bogus ballot injection accusations against Richer weeks after the Arizona superior court found that Lake had provided nothing more than 'speculation' and 'conjecture' to support her claims of intentional misconduct and that she had 'brought forward no evidence' to contradict testimony that the 2022 election was conducted in accordance with established procedures,” Richer says.
According to the suit, Lake made the accusations against Richer in various public speeches, on podcasts and across social media, including on Twitter and right-wing social media platform Truth Social. The accusations, Richer says, were typically accompanied by URLs soliciting donations for Lake.
Richer testified during the proceedings of Lake’s election challenge that his responsibilities as county recorder do not include Election Day operations or ballot tabulation. The 300,000 ballots disputed by Lake, according to Richer, were merely early voting ballots and actually largely broke in favor of Lake.
Richer said in a Thursday op-ed published by the Arizona Republic that Lake “cast doubt on my loyalty to our country, our state and my office. She did this knowing that it would only throw gasoline on the fire of falsehoods about our elections. Lake has not sent me into hiding. Nor will she ever. But her defamatory statements have irrevocably altered my life, closed opportunities and damaged relationships.”
The Arizona Supreme Court tossed Lake's complaint against Richer and other state and election officials in May 2023, finding that she did not show evidence of widespread voter fraud and rejecting her claims that ballot tampering and miscalculations affected the race's outcome.
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