In a significant legal victory for former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, a judge has allowed her remaining election misconduct claim to proceed, according to a report from Newsweek.
Lake, who was endorsed by Donald Trump, contested the election results, alleging that irregularities in Maricopa County prevented her from winning in Arizona’s most populous region.
Despite apparently losing the gubernatorial race to Democrat Katie Hobbs by over 17,000 votes, Lake refused to concede.
Her persistent legal challenges have been largely dismissed at the state level, initially by a judge and later by an appeals court.
However, in a turn of events, her case will be heard following the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision in March to order a trial court to review Maricopa County’s procedures for verifying mail-in ballot signatures.
Lake’s lawsuit was initially dismissed by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter A. Thompson in December, but he permitted Lake’s claim concerning the county’s signature verification process to progress in court on Monday.
The case is set to be heard at 9 a.m. on Wednesday, May 17, in Maricopa County.
Lake embraced the court’s decision with enthusiasm.
On Twitter, she celebrated, “HUGE: Following Supreme Court Ruling, Maricopa County Judge grants @KariLake the opportunity to EXPOSE Election Fraud IN COURT!”
She further added, “We’re going to Court. Get ready!”
In the forthcoming trial, Lake will have the opportunity to present evidence and argue that the county’s procedures for verifying signatures on mail-in ballots were flawed.
The ultimate goal of her legal challenge is to demonstrate that these alleged procedural errors potentially impacted a sufficient number of votes to overturn the election results.
On Saturday, Lake tweeted that she has “new evidence” against Maricopa County in connection to her legal case challenging the result of the state’s governor race, another Newsweek report notes.
“Our new evidence shows that Maricopa County falsely certified that it had passed Logic & Accuracy testing & then secretly tested all of the tabulators on three different days,” she wrote, adding that “260 of the tabulators failed during these tests. Maricopa County USED them on Election Day anyway.”
