July 15, 2023

Failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is taking losing to an extreme. This time, Lake is ordered to pay a $122,200 sanctions penalty along with her attorney Alan Dershowitz and fellow candidate Mark Finchem for pursuing a "frivolous" lawsuit that sought to overturn her 2022 midterm loss.

The Messenger reports:

Running on a platform of denialism about the 2020 election, Lake followed former President Donald Trump's playbook after then-Arizona Attorney General Katie Hobbs defeated her in the race for governor.

Lake filed multiple lawsuits seeking to overturn her defeat, including one listing Finchem as a co-plaintiff. Finchem, a member of the Oath Keepers extremist group, lost his race for Arizona Secretary of State, a position that would have given him power over the administration of elections in a key swing state.

After Lake and Finchem's lawsuits failed, the fallout over their efforts began.

In December, a federal judge skewered Lake, Finchem and Dershowitz for filing "false, misleading and unsupported" claims about the election in their lawsuit. Dershowitz has since downplayed his role in the litigation. The ex-Harvard professor, who has previously represented O.J. Simpson and Trump, argued that he wasn't an election denier and that he only allowed his signature to appear on the complaint because of his interest in an ancillary constitutional issue.

For some reason, election deniers aren't learning from their mistakes and keep going down the same path. In late May of this year, Lake lost her last legal challenge to the Arizona election. Can we just get narcissism out of politics, please? That should disqualify a candidate.

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