“I’m collecting evidence”: Arizona election loser Kari Lake refuses to concede, hires “best” lawyers

Failed Arizona Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake, who repeatedly refused to say she would accept the results of the governor’s race in Arizona if she lost, refused to concede and may challenge her election loss to Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs.

Some of the election denier’s allies are urging her to challenge the election results because of a printing problem, which slowed the tabulation of scores of ballots in Maricopa County on Election Day and caused uncertainty at some polling places, according to The New York Times. Republican Maricopa County officials said that the malfunctioning ballot-counting machines did not indicate any instances of “fraud” and did not deny anyone the opportunity to vote.

But the Trump-backed former news anchor posted a video to Twitter Thursday morning accusing the “broken election system here in Arizona” of disenfranchising voters. 

“Our election officials failed us miserably,” Lake said. “What happened to Arizonans on Election Day is unforgivable. Tens of thousands of Maricopa County voters were disenfranchised. Now, I’m busy here collecting evidence and data. Rest assured I have assembled the best and brightest legal team and we are exploring every avenue to correct the many wrongs that have been done this past week.”

Lake’s campaign is working with other Republican state campaigns to prepare a legal fight, collecting testimonials from voters to be used in court, according to two people familiar with the planning, The Times reported.

Former President Donald Trump has also remained vocal in the matter and called Lake on Sunday, falsely claiming that Democrats were trying to steal her victory as they had done to him in 2020, according to a person familiar with the conversation, The Times reported. 

“They just took the election away from Kari Lake,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.  

Other election deniers who supported Trump’s false election fraud claims in 2020 are once again using election fraud conspiracies to promote the idea that the election was stolen from Lake. 

Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist who advised him to try to overturn the presidential election results, urged Arizona officials not to certify the election. Election denial influencer Seth Keshel posted on Truth Social that Lake “won’t be conceding a damn thing,” and Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn demanded a hand count of the results, The Times reported. 

Floyd Brown, founder of the right-wing publication The Western Journal, claimed on social media that the election “was the most corrupt” he had ever witnessed and that “illegal schemes [were] used by Maricopa County to disenfranchise voters.”

“Spent hours last night working with Lake team on a continuing war for Arizona. She will not go quietly into the night. She intends to stand and fight. She knew when she entered this race that it would be tough. Her opponents lack her courage. She is fighting for us,” Brown tweeted. 

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When news broke on Monday that Hobbs had won, prominent election denier Mark Finchem, who lost the race for secretary of state, began pushing out conspiracy theories on social media. 

“Less tweets more lawsuits,” one tweet said. In another, he said that the “results from the machines defy all math” and also that “Polls had me winning Maricopa. No way we lost Maricopa.”

Lake’s campaign also convinced some supporters to attend a Maricopa County Board of Supervisors hearing on Wednesday night, where attendees called on the Board of Supervisors to resign, nullify the election and use paper ballots.

“You are the cancer that is tearing this nation apart,” one attendee said during the meeting.

While other Republican candidates have conceded after losing their races, Lake has posted videos on social media suggesting she will be challenging her election loss to Hobbs. In one video, Lake posted slow-motion clips of her on the campaign trail featuring the Tom Petty classic “I Won’t Back Down.”