Maricopa County Fact-Checks Election Video Pushed by Kari Lake Fans

Officials in Maricopa County, Arizona, have published a Twitter thread rejecting Kari Lake's claim that the 2022 midterms were rigged against her via "secret testing" of voting machines.

Lake lost the gubernatorial election in November by more than 17,000 votes but has refused to concede to Democrat Katie Hobbs. Lake continues to insist the election was stolen from her, even though this claim has been repeatedly dismissed in court.

The Arizona Republican is following in the footsteps of former President Donald Trump, who continues to insist he was the rightful winner of the 2020 election. In April Fox News reached a $787 billion settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, after hosts and guests on the network falsely linked its voting machines to electoral fraud.

On Sunday Lake's team released a video that they said showed "secret testing" on Maricopa County voting systems ahead of the midterms. They said "260 of 446 tabulators failed," but were still used on election day in Republican-leaning areas.

This testing took place on October 14, 17 and 18, "after the legally required logic and accuracy test," according to Lake's team. It added that the faulty machines were used in November and the footage showed "the story of a sabotage."

Maricopa County hit back on Tuesday, branding this allegation a "false claim."

Officials said the footage simply showed memory cards being inserted in voting machines, as "happens in each election."

They tweeted: "Have you seen this viral video? The people sharing it are lying to you. So here we go, defusing a new election 'bombshell' that's a lot like the old 'bombshells.'

In a follow-up post, they wrote: "Claim: 'Maricopa County did secret testing of tabulation equipment. Just look at this video!'

"Facts: If it was a secret, why did we livestream it? That's the opposite of secret. People interested in the facts can find those in our May 10 court filing."

Another post read: "Bottom line: The video shows the installation of new memory cards which happens in each election. A judge already considered this supposedly 'new' evidence in Ms. Lake's election contest and found it unconvincing."

Lake's team rejected this, tweeting later on Tuesday: "Our information is coming directly from Maricopa County's own system log files.

"This is a wonderful bit of gaslighting but all of our allegations are backed up by their own paperwork."

They accepted the video had been livestreamed, but said Maricopa County "didn't think our allies would watch all the footage & catch them."

On May 22 a Maricopa County judge rejected Lake's claim that election officials had improperly verified signatures on thousands of ballots, causing her to finish behind Hobbs in Arizona's largest county. After the ruling, Lake said she planned to pursue the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Earlier in May the Arizona Supreme Court instructed Lake's legal team to pay $2,000 in damages for promoting the "unequivocally false" claim that 35,000 ballots had been "injected" into the Maricopa County results after polling.

Newsweek has contacted Kari Lake by email for comment. We have also reached out to Maricopa County's Elections and Voter Registration department.