Republican Lake, who lost her midterm gubernatorial election to Democrat Katie Hobbs, filed a lawsuit in April alongside secretary of state hopeful Mark Finchem requesting Maricopa and Pima counties use only paper ballots during the November midterm election.
U.S. District Court Judge John Tuchi had previously thrown out the suit in August, but in a ruling on Thursday he sanctioned the Republicans’ lawyers and ordered them to pay court costs in order to deter those who seek to file “similarly baseless suits” in the future.
Appearing on Steve Bannon’s WarRoom podcast after the ruling, Lake said she would “continue to fight for the people of Arizona” despite the setback.
“This is not about me. I’ve said this all along, I’m just one voter, but I care deeply about Arizona. It is not fun to be in the middle of this,” Lake said.
“But we have no other choice. I have no other choice but to stand up and fight right now for the people of Arizona. If I don’t, who will?”
Since losing her race, Lake has repeatedly attacked Maricopa County officials and raised the possibility of a fraudulent election because of a delayed vote count.
On election day, Maricopa County voting centers experienced malfunctions with their tabulation machines and uncounted ballots were collected and officially counted at a later time.
Discussing Tuchi sanctioning her lawyers over the vote machine lawsuit, she accused the system of being “one big dirty swamp” working against Republicans.
“We need to stand up right now at this moment,” she added. “If we let our sacred vote be taken from us with these shoddy, shady elections—I think they’re almost fake elections—then we are gone as a country. I don’t know what choice we have, but to stand up and fight right now. And that’s why I’m doing this.”
In his order granting sanctions on Thursday, Tuchi noted that while Lake and Finchem sought “massive, perhaps unprecedented” federal judicial intervention to change Arizona’s election system ahead of the midterm election, they never had a “factual basis or legal theory that came anywhere close to meeting that burden.”
In a statement, Maricopa County election official Bill Gates said that there have been may examples in recent years of attorneys “trying to weaponize the court for political purposes” in order to “undermine” free and fair elections.
“It is wrong, it is unethical, and these attorneys must be held accountable if we are to protect our democratic republic,” Gates said.
“The sanctions against the lawyers who brought the frivolous Lake v. Hobbs case are a win for the rule of law.”
Newsweek has contacted the Maricopa County board of supervisors for comment.
