Kari Lake Can Overturn Election Even if There's Not Voter Fraud—Lawyer

The lawyer who filed a brief on Kari Lake's behalf said that the Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate could still overturn the results of the Arizona midterms, even if no evidence of voter fraud is found.

Election-law attorney and newly elected Arizona Rep. Alex Kolodin told NewsNation why Lake's legal efforts challenging the state's gubernatorial election results are continuing, even after Democrat Katie Hobbs was officially sworn in on Monday.

Talking on "Dan Abrams Live", Kolodin—whose official website's homepage has a quote from Donald Trump calling him "a hell of an attorney [and] a patriot"—said: "There has never been any sort of time bar on resolutions of election challenges on appeal that requires them to get resolved before the swearing-in."

Kolodin added that the point of Lake's appeal is "that the appellate court will reverse the decision of the trial."

The congressman-elect said it's "very typical with cases like this" to "go up on appeal," adding that "if the trial court got it wrong, the court of appeal would say something."

According to Kolodin, "the trial court got it wrong in terms of requiring proof of fraud or some ill intent. That's simply not what Arizona law requires.

"The only thing that matters is, 'Were there errors? Were they significant enough that they could have changed the results or at least make the results uncertain?'"

Kolodin said that "every voter in Maricopa County knows that there were incredibly pervasive errors on election day that kind came up and slapped this all in the face."

After losing the state's gubernatorial race to Hobbs by more than 17,000 votes, Lake refused to concede.

Instead, she legally challenged the results of the election, asking the court either to declare her the winner or rerun the election in Maricopa County, where voters reportedly faced technical difficulties on Election Day.

Lake's case was thrown out by Maricopa County superior court judge, Peter Thompson, in late December, who rejected her claim that there were problems with ballot printers at polling stations on November 8.

"Indeed, the entire purpose of this litigation was to plant baseless seeds of doubt in the electorate's mind about the integrity and security of the 2022 General Election in Maricopa County," attorney Thomas Liddy wrote on behalf of the defendants in a motion seeking sanctions against Lake in December.

"And while it is one thing to do so on TV or social media sites, it is another thing entirely to attempt to use the imprimatur of the courts to try to achieve that goal," Liddy added.

Lake has appealed Thompson's decision.