For the second time, Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell is representing Maricopa County officials asking for sanctions against Kari Lake and her attorneys related to the 2022 election.
The first request was over Lake and Mark Finchem’s lawsuit last year which sought to stop the use of electronic voting machine tabulators in the election. The second request was filed on Tuesday after Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson ruled a second time against Lake’s election lawsuit, following a second trial that he conducted after being remanded back from the Arizona Supreme Court.
Bob Brickman, a local business and elections lawyer, expressed concern over this development. “There’s widespread public distrust — 50 percent or more — with our courts and state bar attorney disciplinary boards, over following a dual system of justice; one for conservatives, and one for everyone else,” he told The Arizona Sun Times. “This is another example of that, and it only serves to dissuade qualified lawyers from providing legitimate legal services to clients for fear of monetary sanctions by judges, and/or disciplinary reprisals by state bars, despite lawyers doing appropriate due diligence investigations to ensure legal claims pursued were not ‘groundless.’”
Brickman added that things are so bad in Arizona that the state legislature conducted hearings on bills to stop the judicial bias and retaliatory bar complaints. “Unfortunately,” he said, “the bills have failed to pass, leaving lawyers in a quandary.”
Read the rest of the article at The Arizona Sun Times