A trial court judge ordered Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer earlier this month to pay grassroots activist Merissa Hamilton $25,345.50 for the costs of over 100,000 documents she produced in response to a subpoena from him.
Richer sued Republican Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake for defamation last year over remarks she made accusing him of intentionally inserting 300,000 ballots into the 2022 election. As part of the lawsuit, he subpoenaed documents from Hamilton and others. The ballots in question lacked a chain of custody, which is a class 2 misdemeanor.
Richer (pictured above), who started a PAC for Republicans who believe there was no election fraud in 2020, initially refused to pay Hamilton for the documents, claiming that he preferred them in “native form,” which means electronic files if that is how they were first created. He said Hamilton’s “unilateral decision” was to produce them on paper. Hamilton showed up at his office with a truck containing the documents and refused to accept them.
However, about 90 percent of the documents were in paper form when Hamilton first obtained them since they were records from a subpoena former Arizona State Senator Kelly Townsend served on Maricopa County regarding the botched 2020 election.
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