Bar complaints against Kari Lake's attorneys move forward
The Supreme Court’s Attorney Discipline Probable Cause Committee signed orders authorizing the bar to prepare official complaints against Bryan Blehm and Kurt Olsen, who both represented Lake in her challenge to the 2022 gubernatorial election she lost to Gov. Katie Hobbs.
- Olsen, as well as attorney Andrew Parker, face a separate complaint over their representation of Lake and former Arizona lawmaker Mark Finchem in a case challenging the use of voting machines in Arizona ahead of the 2022 elections.
Both Blehm and Olsen face one complaint over a claim they made during Lake’s election challenge that over 35,000 ballots were fraudulently injected into the election. The Arizona Supreme Court previously granted sanctions against Lake’s team for repeating that claim in court.
“Although Lake may have permissibly argued that an inference could be made that some ballots were added, there is no evidence that 35,563 ballots were and, more to the point here, this was certainly disputed,” Chief Justice Robert Brutinel wrote in the sanctions order.
Blehm faces an additional complaint over a post he made on X, formerly known as Twitter, a post alleging a Supreme Court task force was part of a CIA-induced effort to stifle cases exposing election fraud.
The post referred to a decision by Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Brutinel to form a Task Force on Countering Disinformation. The idea was to provide responses to false claims that otherwise would go unanswered, undermining public confidence in the courts.
In his response to the bar, Blehm denied the bar’s allegation that he accused the court of engaging in a conspiracy.
"My tweet was intended to say that the Arizona judiciary was hoodwinked by the national security apparatus specifically to limit attorney speech and willingness to bring valid claims on behalf of their clients," he wrote.
The separate complaint against Olsen and Parker centered on several unsubstantiated claims the attorneys made in court, including that Arizona does not use paper ballots and that voting systems in Maricopa County are connected to the Internet even though an investigation commissioned by the Arizona Senate concluded otherwise.
U.S. District Court Judge John Tuchi dismissed that case and awarded sanctions against Lake’s legal team.
In a response to the bar complaint, an attorney representing Parker argued the judge erred in awarding those sanctions, claiming the case was a good-faith effort to protect the integrity of elections.
The complaints could now enter formal hearings overseen by a disciplinary judge or be settled through a disciplinary agreement.
>
No comments:
Post a Comment