Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer (AP Photo/Serkan Gurbuz), Kari Lake (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake will not bother defending her statements that a Maricopa County official illegally rigged the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election which the former local news anchor lost, her lawyers confirmed Tuesday by seeking a default judgment.
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a registered Republican, filed the defamation lawsuit in June 2023, claiming that Lake and her co-defendants spread “egregious and harmful falsities to further their own agendas — and line their own pockets — at Richer’s expense.”
Richer alleged that Lake’s words had real-world consequences, including “threats of violence, and even death” against him and his family.
In early March, the Arizona Supreme Court refused to keep the lawsuit on hold, meaning the defamation case would move towards discovery and trial. The high court rejection came months after a Maricopa County Superior Court judge ruled Richer made “actionable defamation claim(s)” regarding “provably false” statements that a trial jury could determine to be “either true or false.”
Lake claimed that Richer sabotaged vote tabulators in the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election she lost. She claimed Richer purposefully printing the “wrong image on the ballot” (one inch smaller) and claimed that “300,000 illegal ballots” with “with zero chain of custody” marred the election.
The trial judge ruled that Lake’s words were no mere “imaginative expression or rhetorical hyperbole,” since ballot image size and the number of allegedly illegal ballots were matters that could be proven true or false.
On Tuesday, Lake and her attorneys motioned for a default judgment and an “accelerated damages hearing […] to adjudicate those matters which occupy less than five percent of the amended Complaint.”
Lake’s attempt to explain why she didn’t bother contesting Richer’s claims rang hollow to those who understood the meaning of the ruling. While Lake claimed in a recorded statement that she didn’t want to legitimize the lawsuit, Chief Deputy Attorney General of Arizona Dan Barr remarked that the default judgment did exactly that.
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“Someone should explain to Kari Lake that by not answering @stephen_richer’s complaint and having a default judgment entered against her, she has admitted to EVERYTHING in the complaint as a matter of law,” Barr said, explaining the upshot to Kari Lake. “She has conferred 100% credibility to Richer’s lawsuit.”
Someone should explain to Kari Lake that by not answering @stephen_richer’s complaint and having a default judgment entered against her, she has admitted to EVERYTHING in the complaint as a matter of law. She has conferred 100% credibility to Richer’s lawsuit.
— Dan Barr (@DanCBarr) March 27, 2024
In their court filing, Lake’s attorneys claimed that “defaulting” doesn’t amount to an admission.
“It is often said that defaulting admits the allegations in the operative complaint. This is a misnomer,” the defense wrote, before citing case law that says: “An entry of default serves as a judicial admission of all well-pleaded facts in the complaint. A party against whom default is entered, however, is not held to admit facts that are not well-pleaded or to admit conclusions of law.”
Notably, when the trial judge ruled against Lake by refusing to throw out the lawsuit, he wrote that Richer “offers well pled factual allegations to support his assertion that any statements regarding ballot manipulation are false and defamatory. ”
“By participating in this lawsuit it would only serve to legitimize this perversion of our legal system, and allow bad actors to interfere in our upcoming election, so I won’t be taking part,” she said.
In summary, the lawsuit arose because of allegedly defamatory statements that Lake made about an election official sabotaging an election she lost, and now she is refusing to defend those statements in court for reasons that make little sense for someone who claims to have told the truth. After all, truth is an absolute defense.
Lake’s attorneys indicated in their filing, however, that they want this case resolved “before the forthcoming primary and general elections.”
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer responded to the default judgment move by saying that Lake retreated because she got caught.
“After months of doubling down and defending their lies across Arizona, in the media, and on social media, when push came to shove, the Defendants decided to completely back down and concede that their lies were just that: lies,” he said in a statement. “Because of their actions, my family and I have faced an endless barrage of threats — including calls for our execution — I have lost close personal relationships, and I have had my reputation irreparably damaged.”
“I have said from the beginning that no one is above the rule of law and today further validates that belief,” Richer added. “I look forward to entering the damages phase of this case.”
Protect Democracy lawyer Jared Davidson, one of the attorneys who represented Richer, said that Lake’s “surrender” amounted to her “effectively admitting that she spread lies about Mr. Richer and did so with ‘actual malice,”” a high bar to clear in a defamation action against a public official. Lake’s refusal to assert the truth of her statements as a defense in court spoke volumes, the lawyer said, and now all that’s left is to find out how much Lake, her campaign, and the Lake Fundraising Organization must pay.
“The only thing left to do now is to determine the amount of the damage done to Mr. Richer as a result of Defendants’ misconduct,” Davidson said.
