Kari Lake Admits She Lied About Official Who Is Suing Her For Defamation

Kari Lake is being sued for defamation by an election official in the state of Arizona, and she appears to admit in a recent court filing that she did, in fact, lie about what the man did. But Lake swears that her lies are protected by the First Amendment, even though slander/libel/defamation are clearly NOT protected forms of speech. Lake is now in a position where it is almost impossible for her to win this case, as Farron Cousins explains.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

Kerry Lake, the failed Republican gubernatorial candidate in the Arizona gubernatorial race from 2022 is fending off a defamation lawsuit by Maricopa County Recorder by the name of, uh, Steven Ricker. Now, Mr. Ricker has been the target of Ms. Lake's ire for quite some time. She has specifically mentioned him. She's made some outrageous accusations against him claiming that he intentionally misprinted the ballots so that she would lose and all this other crap. So he sued her for defamation, right? I mean, you are impugning his integrity to do his job. Something that could result in him not being able to get a job in the future. And of course, leading to threats against him all, by the way, meet the standard for defamation even. And this is important for a public official. Well, recently, Kari Lake sent her lawyers into court trying to file an anti slapp suit to get this whole thing dismissed. And in their filing, they seem to admit to admit that, yeah, KA Lake lied about this guy, but she is totally allowed to lie about this man. Here's what they said. This is absolutely idiotic.

Lake's lawyers said Rickers suit should be dismissed because he works for the state and he only brought the suit to deter retaliate against and prevent defendants lawful exercise of their free speech rights on the core public issue of election integrity. They said, quote in the filing, an anti-slap motion is not an attempt to adjudicate falsity, but to avoid the burden of having to justify statements concerning core political speech. Oh, okay. So like, yeah. Well, we don't wanna get into the nuts and bolts about whether or not what she said is false. Right? I think we can all agree didn't happen. By the way, courts have already ruled, uh, in Kerry Lake's previous lawsuits that these allegations against this man were false and she had no evidence to back them up. So you already have that working against you, and then your lawyers file this thing saying, Hey, listen, yes, she may have lied about the guy, but let's not make this about lying.

Let's instead make this about the freedom of speech and let's not censor Carrie Lake because she's allowed to say horrible things about people that may ruin their lives because he is a public official. Right? That's what they're trying to argue. Because yeah, the bar for defamation against a public official is much higher than it is for an average citizen. But this man filed the lawsuit as an average citizen, not through his work. So whether or not that means anything, that'll be for the courts to decide. Honestly, I don't think it is because you're still that public official. However,

Even though he's a public official, he's not exactly a, a well-known, he's not a national figure. So would his status as a Maricopa County election recorder, does that rise to the same level as like President Biden? Definitely not. So you're gonna have a little bit of legal leeway with that. So the bar may be higher, but it's not gonna be as high as Kari Lake would like it to be. But even if the bar is high, you are still not legally allowed to do this. Like slander, libel, defamation are not protected forms of speech. You cannot just say whatever you want about any public official and then say, that's my freedom of speech. Right. No, they can in fact, sue you. Most public officials, you know, the, the higher up people, members of Congress, things like that, they don't bother with filing defamation lawsuits. Every time a media outlet says something about them.

That's not true. They could, they could probably win a lot of 'em, not all of them, but a lot of 'em. But it takes a lot of time to do that. It takes away from their jobs. That's why we don't see these lawsuits being filed every other day. They could be, but they're not. But this guy, he's a local election recorder. He printed out the ballots for the county, right? This isn't somebody that if you go to California or Florida or New York gonna be like, oh yeah, Stephen Ricker. Yeah. Everybody's familiar with him.