Kari Lake to defend election fraud claims in Arizona court

Kari Lake, the Trump-endorsed former Republican candidate for Arizona governor, will finally get her chance to challenge the outcome of the midterm elections in court, The Associated Press reports. In a two-day trial scheduled to begin Wednesday, the former television anchor will have a chance to introduce evidence that supports her claims that her loss should be overturned.

Lake has often echoed Trump's false assertions about election fraud, and now she is asking the judge to either declare her the winner of the November contest or order another vote. Her opponent Democrat Katie Hobbs won the election by over 17,000 votes.

Lake is up against incredible odds to prove her case. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson said she has to prove that misconduct occurred and occurred intentionally to keep her from winning, per AP.

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Still, Lake appears excited for her day in court. "We have a chance to show the world that our elections are truly corrupt and we won't take it anymore," Lake said Tuesday at an event for Turning Point USA, a conservative youth group.

Lawyers representing Hobbs decried the trial as a spectacle and warned against giving Lake a platform to continue to spread her theories about election fraud. "The court should not indulge this kind of a show that plaintiffs want to put on," attorney Abha Khanna told the judge Monday. "The court is not a theater."

Thompson dismissed eight of the 10 initial claims Lake included in the lawsuit, including her allegation that Hobbs and Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer engaged in censorship by flagging Twitter posts with election misinformation for removal. The trial will focus on issues with ballot printers and chain of custody, the two surviving claims in the lawsuit.