PHOENIX — The Arizona Supreme Court has ordered Kari Lake's lawyer to pay $2,000 for making false statements during the Republican's legal attempts to challenge the 2022 election results.
One of the claims Lake made after losing to Democrat Katie Hobbs in Arizona's gubernatorial race is that over 35,000 ballots were "injected" into the vote count. Hobbs beat Lake by about 17,000 votes.
In an order released Thursday, the Supreme Court stated that this assertion about injected ballots was "unsupported" by the record.
"Because Lake’s attorney has made false factual statements to the Court, we conclude that the extraordinary remedy of a sanction... is appropriate," the court order states.
The state court ordered Lake's attorney to pay $2,000 within the next 10 days. The court ordered the lower courts to proceed with litigating the remaining unrelated issue in Lake's election challenge.
In March, the Supreme Court declined to hear most of the claims in Lake's appeal. But the high court did revive a previously-dismissed claim about signature verification procedures and sent it back to the lower court.
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