'Deceitful fraud' Kari Lake will finally pay for pushing 'conspiratorial flimflam': columnist

Failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is facing a defamation lawsuit from Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer -- and Los Angeles Times columnist Mark Barbarak thinks that she's got a good chance of losing.

In his latest column, Barbarak accuses Lake of being a "deceitful fraud" who disgracefully refused to accept her defeat at the hands of Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs and then filed a seemingly endless stream of lawsuits loaded with "conspiratorial flimflam" aimed at overturning results, all of which crashed and burned upon contacts with courts.

The columnist then went through the merits of Richer's lawsuit, and recounted how Lake has made him a central villain in her stolen-election mythology, despite the fact that Richer is a lifelong Republican.

"Lake's phony claims were repeated numerous times, the lawsuit documents, at political rallies, during podcasts and on social media," he notes. "Richer seeks unspecified monetary damages as well as a court order determining Lake's statements were false and requiring her to delete them."

The columnist concludes by noting that, although the bar for winning defamation lawsuits as a public figure is high, Dominion Voting Systems' massive settlement with Fox News shows that it can be overcome.

"Richer may not prevail in his defamation suit against Lake," he writes. "But if it deters other prominent personalities from hustling election-fraud fakery — when they know better — it will have served a fine purpose."