Federal Judge John Tuchi of the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona sanctioned lawyers for Kari Lake and Mark Finchem, failed GOP candidates for Arizona’s governor and secretary of state, for filing baseless lawsuits challenging Arizona’s voting procedures.
Tuchi said in his decision that Lake made “false, misleading and unsupported factual assertions,” citing insufficient evidence in all of Lake’s claims.
The judge sanctioned only lawyers for the candidates, not the candidates themselves, though he stressed that “the Court does not find that Plaintiffs have acted appropriately in this matter — far from it.” The payment will include lawyer fees for Maricopa County.
The attorneys were unnamed in the order, but among those listed in the filings was former Trump advisor Professor Alan Dershowitz.
The case was financed by Pillow Guy Mike Lindell, who said on Thursday evening that an appeal had been filed against Tuchi’s dismissal.
Tuchi was appointed by President Obama in 2013.
On the same day, Superior Court Judge Casey F. McGinley told the three members of the Cochise County Board of Supervisors, “You will canvass the election no later than 5 o’clock.”
When the board convened at 3:30 p.m., with one Republican absent, the two remaining supervisors, one Republican and one Democrat, voted to certify the results.
The court ordered actions ended a standoff that would have subverted the will of more than 2.5 million Arizona voters.
