The Arizona Attorney General’s Office was referred a criminal investigation on Monday into former Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake for allegedly violating state law by tweeting out copies of voter signatures.
The referral came from Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, an attorney representing clients in narco-terrorism and firearms scandals, who stated that the tweets in question violate Section 16-504 of Arizona’s Revised Statutes.
Fontes, a Democrat, represented Manuel Celis-Acosta in 2011 following his arrest in Operation Fast and Furious, in which federal officers tried to sell firearms to Mexican drug cartels, according to Fox News. In 2011, the attorney represented Emilia Palomina-Robles, a woman who was involved in a group charged with an attempt to purchase a Stinger missile and other military weapons for a Mexican drug cartel.
In the tweet that Fontes referenced, Lake claimed that the GOP-led Senate had confirmed that 40,000 ballots were illegal. To prove it, she showed examples of voter signatures, which are not, according to the statement, allowed to be accessed or reproduced by someone other than the voter.
“Nothing in this section shall preclude public inspection of voter registration records at the office of the county recorder for the purpose prescribed by this section, except that … the records containing a voter’s signature … shall not be accessible or reproduced by any person other than the voter…” the office cited in the referral.
For the past several months, Lake has argued that she won the 2022 election, even though the official results show she lost to Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs by over 17,000 votes.
At a “Save Arizona Rally” in Scottsdale on Sunday, Lake spoke to a throng of supporters as she vowed to hold public officials accountable for what she called a “botched” election. She called Gov. Hobbs a “squatter in the governor’s office,” according to The Washington Post.
Former Arizona Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright pointed out on Twitter how Fontes back in 2020 had “authorized voters’ signatures from the Maricopa voter registration database to be sent to Runbeck in 2020 to be used in the VerusPro Automated Signature Verification System.”
“Based on Fontes’ letter, did Fontes himself violate 16-168(F) in 2020?” she asked.
