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Democrat ‘Election Deniers’ in Pennsylvania and Iowa Refuse to Concede Races


By: M.D. Kittle | November 18, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/11/18/democrat-election-deniers-in-pennsylvania-and-iowa-refuse-to-concede-races/

Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey on the campaign trail.
Democrat campaigns and their allies have no compunction about breaking election law to grab and keep power.

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Funny how the times change. 

Four years ago, Democrats and their pals in corporate media began painting then-President Donald Trump and Republicans who questioned the results of the troubled 2020 election as “election deniers.” Now, Democrats are doing all they can — including breaking election law — to challenge GOP victories in Iowa and Pennsylvania despite “insurmountable” odds. Even The Washington Post, part of the left’s corporate media public-relations team, sees the writing on the wall for Sen. Bob Casey, D-Penn. The entrenched incumbent lost to Republican challenger Dave McCormick by some 24,000 votes in a swing state election that helped Republicans take back the Senate with a comfortable majority. The Associated Press and other news outlets called the race for McCormick. But Casey and his party of election integrity deniers, led by Democrat political ambulance chaser Marc Elias (Hillary Clinton’s Russian dossier peddler), refuse to concede. Instead, Casey’s campaign has sought an expensive recount, and has no compunction about grinding election law under foot to tally enough votes to hold the seat.

‘Tipping the Scales’  

“Sen. Casey just refuses to accept the fact that he’s lost this election, so he is costing taxpayers well over a million dollars” for a statewide recount, Linda Kerns, 2024 Pennsylvania Election Integrity Counsel for the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign, told The Federalist late last week on the “Simon Conway Show” in Des Moines.

The Democrat senator and his attorneys are pushing for invalid provisional and mail-in ballots not correctly signed or properly dated to be counted, contrary to a Pennsylvania court ruling.  Democrats on some county boards dismissed the law and the court ruling in agreeing to accept suspect and invalid ballots. 

“I think we all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country,” Bucks County Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia, a Democrat, said Thursday.

“People violate laws anytime they want,” she added. “So, for me, if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention. There’s nothing more important than counting votes.” It was a troubling statement from a public official, and another in countless examples of why Democrats got their clocks cleaned in this month’s election. Voters have had more than enough of leftist-led lawlessness over the past four years. 

Even the Dem-friendly Washington Post editorial board can smell the desperation. The election lawlessness, too, now seems a bridge too far for the left-leaning WaPo board.   

“Democrats would surely protest if a Republican commissioner made the same statement [as Ellis-Marseglia] to justify tipping the scales for their party’s Senate nominee — and they would be right,” the editorial board wrote in a piece headlined, “Democrats thumb their nose at the rule of law in Pennsylvania.” “Elections need rules, established in advance of the voting, and those rules must be applied equally and consistently.”

The same newspaper, of course, joined a chorus of accomplice media outlets chiding swing state Republican Senate candidates, Eric Hovde in Wisconsin and Kari Lake in Arizona, for not conceding closely contested elections. The conservatives have raised election integrity questions, but neither has asked election officials and courts to break the law to reverse their opponents’ election leads.  

“Four years ago, many Republicans embraced Trump’s brand of denialism when he stoked far-fetched theories to try to undo his loss of the presidency. Now, they are largely staying silent amid scattered false claims of rigged elections in downballot races — and they’re calling on Sen. Bob Casey (D) to concede that he narrowly lost in Pennsylvania,” a team of leftist Washington Post reporters concluded in the piece — published a day before the editorial — that served as a defense of Casey’s recount call and a knock-on Republicans mulling their own legal options. 

In Pennsylvania the math doesn’t look good for Casey, but he’s counting on the recount and a stack of invalid votes. 

“But even if Sen. Casey wins on these, there’s still not enough for him to win this election so he’s just desperately hanging on,” Kerns said. 

‘The Election Deniers are the Democrats’

It’s a similar situation in Iowa’s 1st Congressional District, where Democrat Christina Bohannan’s campaign on Thursday sought a recount of the votes in an election in which incumbent Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks won by less than 1,000 votes. The purple district saw Miller-Meeks win her first term in 2020 by a final recount tally of just six votes. 

Bohannan’s path to victory appears unlikely, too, but the campaign said in a statement that a recount will ensure “that every voter is heard” and that they have “full trust in this process and will accept the results regardless of the outcome.” The Associated Press has yet to call the race. 

Miller-Meeks said the vote count, as it stands, is “insurmountable” and that the districtwide recount is an unnecessary expense to taxpayers. 

“In Iowa, all of the legal ballots have been counted, all of the provisional ballots and the military ballots have been counted. The counties have certified their election results, and we remain ahead. We gained votes on election night,” the congresswoman told The Federalist Friday on the “Simon Conway Show” on NewsRadio 1040 WHO in Des Moines. “So, it’s an insurmountable lead. But, yes, my concern is after the recount when we’re still ahead, which we will be, I’m very confident of that, they’re going to continue to deny the election and they may go on to do a contest and try to get ballots admitted that were illegal ballots.” 

Republicans have already secured enough victories to hold the House, but Democrats are fighting tooth and nail to stave off defeat and a wider GOP majority in a handful of races yet to be called. Those include Iowa’s 1st Congressional District, two House races in California, and one each in Alaska and Ohio.  

Miller-Meeks said the tables have turned in the “election denier” narrative. 

“We’ve heard for four years how Republicans were a threat to democracy; they were going to overturn democracy. But really what is happening is that the election deniers, the people who are trying to thwart the rule of law, trying to thwart what a state constitution allows when it comes to elections, are the Democrats,” the Republican congresswoman said. 

Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.

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JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON Op-ed: The Culture War Isn’t The Most Important Issue Of 2024, It’s The Only Issue


JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON | MAY 09, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/09/the-culture-war-isnt-the-most-important-issue-of-2024-its-the-only-issue/

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The more obvious it becomes that our domestic political struggles are actually part of a much larger spiritual war over the fate of western civilization, that we are today engaged not so much in a political fight as a religious battle between good and evil, the stronger the urge seems to be among Republican politicians to deny this reality and take refuge in the comforting political narratives of the past.

A perfect case in point was a tweet last week from Kari Lake’s permanent campaign, which managed in one fell swoop to channel the deeply misguided political analysis of the entire neocon Washington establishment: “No one is saying not to fight the culture war. But it’s simply not the most critical issue heading into 2024.”

“The GOP must show the country how it plans to turn the economy around & prevent World War 3,” she added. “We need to take this country back from @JoeBiden before we can take our culture back from his friends.”

Ah, yes. The comforting fiction that if we can just show voters how we plan to turn the economy around, surely then we’ll regain power, surely then we’ll have a mandate from the people — and then (and only then) we can “take our culture back.”

With apologies to Lake, who before the midterms seemed to have a bright political future in the emerging populist GOP, this is absolute nonsense. On the one hand, it’s a desperate cope, the embodiment of the stale, low-energy politics that have kept conservatives out of power in Washington for most of the last three decades. On the other, it’s a textbook neocon talking point, pretending the culture war is a distraction when in fact it’s the only war whose outcome really will decide the fate of our country.

Ironically, it’s also an example of the kind of politics that Lake herself purported to defy. She made a name for herself during the midterm cycle by taking on the political establishment and attacking the corporate media’s false narratives about 2020 and much else. Lake isn’t the politician you’d think would fall into this trap, yet she did. Why?

The best explanation has nothing to do with Lake in particular but with the tendency of all politicians to want to explain the problems we face and offer practical solutions. The economy is bad, here’s how we fix it. The cities are filled with dangerous lunatics, here’s how we make our streets safe again. The border is overrun with illegal immigration, here’s how we crack down and secure it.

Republicans are more naturally susceptible to this way of thinking because, unlike Democrats, they tend to be less rabidly ideological and less committed to fundamentally altering America and bringing about political and social revolution. But this way of thinking — that our most pressing problems just need common-sense policy fixes that normal people support! — is woefully inadequate for our current moment. 

Put simply, the big mistake in thinking the culture war isn’t the most critical issue heading into 2024 is that all of American politics is now one big culture war. The culture war is the only issue because the cultural war is everything now. When one side stakes its claim to political power on offering abortion up until birth and transgender operations for 8-year-olds, and holds out these policies as proof of its moral authority, we’re way past arguing over how to get the economy back on track. There’s no going back to that kind of politics.

Tucker Carlson hit on this at the end of his big speech at Heritage recently. He compared the values of the political left to the values of the Aztecs, who sacrificed children to their bloodthirsty gods — and he wasn’t wrong. Our politics, he argued, have shifted profoundly in a relatively short period of time. Instead of arguing over the best means to bring about an agreed-upon common good, we no longer agree about what the common good is. Forget about whether Republicans or Democrats are right about the ideal marginal tax rate. We can’t even agree on whether men and women exist as meaningful categories. And if we don’t get that question right, you can forget about economic prosperity, much less anything like a republic or a constitutional system of government. 

What the neocons and establishment politicians don’t seem to understand is that the culture war has become a grinding war of attrition that will end with the complete destruction of one side. There is no way to reconcile the vision of the common good espoused by the transgender movement, on the one hand, and orthodox Christians, on the other.

The culture war in America is not some luxury good that Republican politicians can sample now and then. It has consumed our politics by revealing deep, uncrossable chasms in our national life. So, we now find ourselves in a different kind of struggle. Call it a culture war, a religious war, a battle between good and evil, or all of the above. It’s a war for survival between two competing and irreconcilable visions of what America should be.

Any politician on the right that doesn’t understand that, who thinks we just need to show voters our plan for getting the economy back on track, needs to step aside and make room for leaders who know what time it is, that the hour is late, the day now far spent, and the time for fighting has come. The culture war is now the big tent. Those who embrace it, who delve into the fray without apology, will be the next crop of leaders on both the right and the left.

Keep this in mind as we march toward the 2024 election cycle. The cast of buffoons and egomaniacs on the Republican side will feature mostly candidates who don’t understand or don’t want to admit what’s happening. They will say things like, “No one is saying not to fight the culture war. But it’s simply not the most critical issue heading into 2024.” And when they say that, they’ll be doing you a favor. You can then safely ignore whatever else they say because you’ll know at that point they’re either a fool or a coward, and all they have to offer is defeat. 

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

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With 25,000 Mysterious Votes and Missing Documents, Maricopa’s 2022 Election Process Marked by Chaos and Uncertainty


BY: VICTORIA MARSHALL | JANUARY 18, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/01/18/with-25000-mysterious-votes-and-missing-documents-maricopas-2022-election-process-marked-by-chaos-and-uncertainty/

ballot drop box
Arizona law requires the county recorder to show the origins of and chain-of-custody documents for every drop box ballot obtained.

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While the GOP and conservative media have largely moved on from Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and the systemic failures that occurred in Maricopa County on Nov. 8, court testimony and eyewitness reports from the Lake trial include allegations that Arizona’s largest county violated state law by failing to implement chain-of-custody documentation for Election Day ballots, resulting in a mysterious 25,000 extra votes added to Maricopa County’s official tally within a 24-hour period — more than the margin of victory between Lake and gubernatorial victor Katie Hobbs.

It was about 10:00 on election night when Maricopa County’s ballot tabulation vendor, Runbeck Election Services, received its first truckload of Election Day drop box ballots. While Runbeck received seven truckloads total (the last was completed about 5 a.m. the following morning), Runbeck staff thought it odd the deliveries did not come earlier throughout the day. But that wasn’t the only glitch. There were no chain-of-custody forms delivered with the ballots, a stark departure from typical procedure.

According to Runbeck employee Denise Marie, prior to Nov. 8, drop box ballots were “delivered in red bins with a chain of custody form” from the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center (MCTEC), which listed how many ballots were delivered.

But on election night, “instead of receiving the ballots in red bins, the ballots from the drop boxes had been placed in mail trays and loaded onto mail cages. MCTEC did not include the Maricopa County Delivery Receipt forms with any of the Election Day drop box ballot deliveries. There were no chain of custody forms with the ballots and no count of the number of ballots that were delivered,” Marie wrote in a sworn affidavit.

Maricopa County Co-Director of Elections Reynaldo Valenzuela even testified that while the county’s election workers count drop box ballots and record the counts on documents as required by law prior to Election Day, they did not count the ballots retrieved from drop boxes on Election Day itself. During the Lake trial, Valenzuela was asked whether Maricopa County election officials know the precise number of drop box ballots on Election Day, and he told the court, “On Election Day, no, because we’re not doing drop box courier process at that time. It’s a different process for Election Day.”

According to Lake attorney Kurt Olsen, this is in direct violation of Arizona state statute, which requires the county recorder to maintain records that log the chain of custody for ballots “during early voting through the completion of provisional voting tabulation.”

Per Arizona’s Election Procedures Manual, when ballots are taken from drop boxes, they must either be counted at the local vote center or be placed in secure ballot transport containers to be taken back to the county for tabulation. When the county recorder or elections official opens the container, he or she must count the number of ballots inside and note it on a retrieval form.

Because Maricopa County tabulators received more Election Day drop box ballots than they had ever received before, as County Recorder Stephen Richer testified, they removed the ballots from the ballot transport containers without counting or recording the number on a retrieval form for each drop box, as witnessed by Republican poll watcher Leslie White. This is a violation of the chain-of-custody requirements the county recorder is tasked with implementing.

The ballots were then put in mail trays and loaded onto mail cages, which were then put on trucks and delivered to Runbeck to be scanned and counted, according to supply-chain auditor and Lake trial witness Heather Honey. And notably, according to Marie’s sworn affidavit, this loading of ballots into the trucks also occurred without any documentation or record of the number of ballots on each.

Since Maricopa County failed to create its own chain-of-custody documents for the Election Day drop box ballots, Runbeck made its own (called “MC Inbound Receipt of Delivery Forms“), which logged the seven truckloads of drop box ballots on election night. On the delivery forms, Runbeck estimated the total number of Election Day drop box ballots to be 263,379 by multiplying the maximum number of ballots a mail tray can hold by the number of trays received, as Honey explained to The Federalist.

Runbeck CEO Jeff Ellington gave his staff a similar estimate of the number of ballots received via an email on Nov. 9, saying, “we started getting mail packets dropped off from Maricopa around 10pm last night and received mail packets about every hour through sunrise this morning. Likely between 250 and 275K packets were dropped off at the polls yesterday.”

At a press conference that evening, Richer affirmed Runbeck’s estimate by saying the county had received an unprecedented 275,000 drop-off ballots on Election Day. That same day, Maricopa County reported the total number of ballots cast in the 2022 general election to the Arizona Department of State: 1,136,849 ballots, with 407,664 ballots left to count — 1,544,513 ballots total.

However, on that same day, around 5:30 p.m., Maricopa County asked Runbeck to calculate the total number of Election Day drop-off ballots received, according to Marie, who was tasked with running the tabulation herself. Marie found that Runbeck’s records showed 298,942 drop box ballots had been received and scanned on Election Day.

As a result of such a discrepancy between the estimate and the official tally, Maricopa County sent a new vote tally to the Arizona secretary of state’s office on Nov. 10 (earlier that day, Richer had sent an email to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors admitting he could not reconcile the differences between the county’s numbers and the secretary of state’s listing, demonstrating that even the supposed expert official in charge of the counting process couldn’t figure out where the extra ballots came from). Instead of the original 1,544,513 total ballots reported for the 2022 general election in Maricopa County, the secretary of state’s website now listed 1,569,603, a more than 25,000-vote discrepancy with no explanation. That same day, Maricopa County gave another press conference, stating it had received 292,000 Election Day drop box ballots without batting an eye.

What This Means

Arizona law requires the county recorder to show the origins and chain-of-custody documents for every drop box ballot obtained. According to Runbeck employee Denise Marie and Maricopa County Co-Director of Elections Reynaldo Valenzuela, Maricopa County violated state law by failing to create any chain-of-custody documentation for the drop box ballots received on Election Day. Because of this failure, no records exist to dispute or reconcile the discrepancy between the number of ballots Runbeck first reported (263,379) and its final tally (298,942), a more than 35,000-vote change. As Olsen remarked in his closing argument for the Lake trail, “If you don’t have a count from MCTEC when those ballots are being transported to Runbeck, how do you know whether that count is secure?”

Nor do there appear to be chain-of-custody documents, a violation of Arizona law, showing how Maricopa County was able to add more than 25,000 ballots to its final tally. That addition is more than Hobbs’ margin of victory, which was about 17,000 votes.

“On November 9th, the reported count is 25,000 ballots less, which is beyond the margin here, than on November 10th,” Olsen said. “So the day after the election, they put out what the count is and then magically 25,000 ballots appear on November 10th, and well, hey, that’s the race.”

While part of the argument Lake’s attorneys used in their lawsuit seeking to challenge Arizona’s gubernatorial election was that Maricopa County violated its own Election Procedural Manual by failing to implement chain-of-custody documentation, Arizona Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson rejected the claim due to the county’s assertion that such chain-of-custody documents exist, even though it failed to produce them. At the time of the trial, Maricopa County hadn’t fulfilled a public records request for the documents.

But while such documents do exist for drop box ballots counted prior to Election Day, no such chain-of-custody paperwork exists for the Election Day drop box ballots themselves, Honey reiterated to The Federalist. The judge did not consider this alleged violation of state law and ruled against Lake’s challenge, saying she failed to present clear and convincing evidence of widespread misconduct.

Arizona has an impossibly high bar for overturning elections on the grounds of misconduct, as the judge himself noted. Lake not only had to allege misconduct but intentional misconduct, such to affect the outcome of the election. Lake has since filed two appeals — one with an appeals court, the other with the Arizona Supreme Court. The appeals court agreed to expedite her case.

When asked about its alleged failure to implement chain-of-custody documentation for the Nov. 8 election, Communications Manager for the Maricopa County Elections Department Matthew Roberts told The Federalist: “There are robust tracking and security procedures in place to document and ensure proper chain-of-custody of early ballots on Election Day. These policies and procedures were followed on Election Day, as well as throughout the early voting period. At no point during the process were chain of custody policies broken or procedures not followed and documented.”

The Maricopa County Elections Department did not respond to The Federalist’s request for documentation of the chain-of-custody process for the Election Day drop box ballots.

Victoria Marshall is a staff writer at The Federalist. Her writing has been featured in the New York Post, National Review, and Townhall. She graduated from Hillsdale College in May 2021 with a major in politics and a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @vemrshll.

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Scrutinizing Arizona’s Election Administration Does Not Make Kari Lake An ‘Election Denier’

BY: AUGUSTE MEYRAT | NOVEMBER 21, 2022

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/11/21/scrutinizing-arizonas-election-administration-does-not-make-kari-lake-an-election-denier/

Kari Lake clapping standing outside at campaign event
The media’s ‘election denier’ smear is an attempt to silence Americans concerned about election integrity.

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Even though the Arizona governor’s race has been called in favor of Katie Hobbs, Hobbs’ opponent Kari Lake has not conceded and vote counting and vote correcting are still happening. As has been reported (in mainly conservative media), many voters were turned away on Election Day because of broken printers or given provisional ballots that wouldn’t be counted. Furthermore, many ballots were not counted because of a non-matching signature or some mistake in filling out the ballot. This means voters are being contacted about their ballot being rejected and given a chance to correct or “cure” it. The window for doing this just ended on Nov. 17.

Considering how laughably convoluted this process is, along with its many vulnerabilities to fraud and error, it’s more than understandable to see why Lake, someone projected to win big and who faced a meek candidate who refused to debate her or even do much campaigning, refuses to give up. The glacially slow counting, the numerous malfunctioning printers and ballot machines, and the recent history of gross irregularities from the previous election all give ample reason for suspicion. There’s also the added wrinkle of Hobbs refusing to recuse herself from the role of supervising the election — somehow this didn’t constitute a conflict of interest.

And yet, for all this, the corporate media are blasting Lake for daring to challenge the election result, living up to her reputation as a dirty, rotten “election denier.” Here’s just a small sampling of headlines: “Election denier Kari Lake refuses to concede Arizona governor race she lost” in The Guardian, “Katie Hobbs elected Arizona’s 5th female governor, defeating election denier Kari Lake” in the Arizona Republic, “Kari Lake Is Denying Her Election Loss” in New York Magazine, and “Democrat Katie Hobbs defeats election denier Kari Lake for Arizona governor, AP projects” in Yahoo News.

As David Harsanyi has argued, this charge of election denier — that is, a person who questions and/or challenges elections — is a ridiculous criticism that stigmatizes perfectly rational behavior in a democracy. Furthermore, it’s a label that applies far more to Democrats despite being exclusively directed at Republicans. This insult (coupled with “the big lie”) became popular in 2020 after Donald Trump and many of his supporters claimed the presidential election was stolen.

It’s no secret that the left continues to call its opponents election deniers because it has been an effective tool to silence dissent. It casts people like Trump and Lake as unhinged losers who are ready to smash the whole system because they didn’t win. Thus, to give even the slightest credence to their objections is tantamount to undermining “Our Democracy.” And if anyone thinks that is an exaggeration, they should know that hundreds of Jan. 6 protesters have been thrown in prison and denied bail because they were “election deniers” who ostensibly posed a threat to the country.

However, the more successful it is to slander people as “election deniers,” the more destructive it becomes. First, it is an accusation that immediately groups the accused with every crackpot imaginable. Even though Lake has plenty of reasons to question her election, she is nonetheless associated with the QAnon Shaman and other disturbed crackpots who had their own theories about fraudulent elections and the deep state. This in turn pushes away her supporters and other conservatives who want to be taken seriously.

If the claim that an election is rigged is false, it should be easy enough for the left to simply prove it instead of delaying vote counting. But even if they can, the guilt-by-association still does more harm to conservatives who will start fighting one another instead of working together on getting accurate election results. This can be seen as Lake and her team toil away at curing votes and rooting out errors while her fellow Republicans have given up and have instead complained about candidate quality and messaging.

This attempt to move on not only demoralizes all efforts to challenge elections, but it also leads to faulty analysis. It’s completely useless to criticize the direction and composition of the GOP and its leadership when so many elections might very well be rigged. If Democratic candidates are stuffing ballot boxes and throwing out Republican ballots with impunity, it doesn’t matter who’s running for office, what they say, or even who’s voting. At the very minimum, Democrats’ relentless demands for mail-in ballots and remote voting, which are particularly susceptible to fraud, are a major threat to the integrity of our elections.

Second, and more importantly, the election denier accusation increasingly removes all recourse for justice. If an election is fraudulent, laws were broken, and large swaths of the electorate are effectively disenfranchised, there is nowhere they can turn because the well has been poisoned. As was shown in 2020, no judge, not even the U.S. Supreme Court, will dare hear the case and examine the evidence, and few conservative writers or pundits will bother talking about it. Rather, they will demand proof, knowing quite well that no amount of evidence will change their mind or any election outcome. Over time, it becomes an unprovable claim that guarantees political anathema to the conservative who makes it.

While Lake might not be able to overturn the result of her election, she should be commended for trying. Far from threatening the legitimacy of the election, she is breathing life into it, giving a voice to people who rightly want answers and accountability. Rather than being election deniers, they should be recognized as election defenders, putting their faith in the voters and the American political system.

Auguste Meyrat is an English teacher in the Dallas area. He holds an MA in humanities and an MEd in educational leadership. He is the senior editor of The Everyman and has written essays for The Federalist, The American Conservative, and The Imaginative Conservative, as well as the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. Follow him on Twitter.

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Kari Lake Fires Off Biting One-Line Statement After Outlets Call Race for Katie Hobbs


 By Jack Davis  November 15, 2022 at 6:49am

Read more at https://www.westernjournal.com/kari-lake-fires-off-biting-one-line-statement-outlets-call-race-katie-hobbs/

Republican Kari Lake is not wilting after projections emerged Monday that she will lose the Arizona governor’s race to Democrat Katie Hobbs.

“Arizonans know BS when they see it,” Lake said on Twitter.

During the campaign, she had frequently questioned the integrity of the 2020 election that led to Joe Biden’s presidency, and last month she had told ABC News that she would concede the gubernatorial race only if “it’s fair, honest and transparent.”

Trending: Breaking: Insider Reveals Kari Lake Will NOT Concede Governor’s Race After Media Calls It for Hobbs

“When I first started voting back in the ’80s, we had Election Day,” Lake said in that interview. “Our Constitution says Election Day. It doesn’t say election season, election month, and we’ve watched as our Election Day has turned into election week and election weeks and now election month. And the longer you drag that out, the more fraud with problems there are.”

  • On Monday, nearly a week after the midterm elections, ABC News projected Hobbs to be the winner of the Arizona race, concluding that her election was part of “a stunning rejection of election deniers in midterm contests.”
  • CNN also projected the Democrat to win, saying she was “defeating one of the most prominent defenders of former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.”
  • Fox News joined the chorus declaring Lake had been defeated but noted that according to Arizona’s rules, the contest might face a recount.
  • The Associated Press explained its call for Hobbs by saying “the latest round of vote releases gave her a big enough lead that the AP determined she would not relinquish it.”
  • “The AP concluded that, even though Lake had been posting increasingly larger margins in vote updates from Maricopa County, she was not gaining a big enough share to overtake Hobbs and was running out of remaining votes,” the wire service said.

AP numbers posted in The New York Times on Monday night gave Hobbs a margin of about 20,000 votes out of the roughly 2.5 million votes cast with 95 percent reported.

Hobbs issued a statement after media outlets proclaimed her to have won.

“I want to thank the voters for entrusting me with this immense responsibility. It is truly an honor of a lifetime, and I will do everything in my power to make you proud. I want to thank my family, our volunteers, and campaign staff. Without all of your hard work, passion, and sacrifice this night would not be possible. Thank you from the bottom of my heart,” she said.

Related: Kari Lake Gains Significant Ground After Arizona Posts Major Vote Update

“For the Arizonans who did not vote for me, I will work just as hard for you – because even in this moment of division, I believe there is so much more that connects us,” she said, adding, “Let’s get to work.”

During the campaign, Hobbs had labeled Lake an “election-denying, media-hating, conspiracy-loving, chaos-causing opponent.”

Journalist Kyle Becker offered his thoughts that denying an election was fair does not mean one wears the media label of “election denier.”

Lake has said Hobbs, who as Arizona’s secretary of state oversees elections, should have recused herself from overseeing the election.

Jack Davis

Contributor, News

Jack Davis is a freelance writer who joined The Western Journal in July 2015 and chronicled the campaign that saw President Donald Trump elected. Since then, he has written extensively for The Western Journal on the Trump administration as well as foreign policy and military issues.

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Dem Katie Hobbs blames GOP opponent​ for campaign HQ burglary. But police arrest busts her narrative.


By CHRIS ENLOE | October 28, 2022

Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/katie-hobbs-burglary-police-make-arrest/

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Katie Hobbs, the Democratic candidate for governor in Arizona, blamed her challenger, Republican Kari Lake, for a break-in at her campaign headquarters this week.

But police caught the individual they say is responsible for the crime — and he is not connected to Lake’s campaign.

After an individual broke into Hobbs’ campaign office and stole several electronic items, Hobbs accused Lake of inciting threats that culminated in the break-in.

“Let’s be clear: for nearly two years Kari Lake and her allies have been spreading dangerous misinformation and inciting threats against anyone they see fit,” the Hobbs campaign said in a statement.

“The threats against Arizonans attempting to exercise their constitutional rights and their attacks on elected officials are the direct result of a concerted campaign of lies and intimidation,” the statement added.

On Thursday, police arrested 36-year-old Daniel Mota Dos Reis for the burglary. He was identified via surveillance footage and was already in jail for a separate commercial burglary.

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“On the night of October 26th, a patrol officer viewed a news story displaying a released image of the surveillance video. The officer recognized the man in the image as a suspect that was arrested earlier in the day for another unrelated commercial burglary,” police said in a press release. “The officer researched the arrest and learned the suspect, 36-year-old Daniel Mota Dos Reis, was still in jail but would soon be released. The officer contacted the jail and was able to re-arrest Dos Reis.”

Reis was booked on one count of third-degree burglary.

Prior to the arrest, Lake condemned Hobbs’ accusations.

“That is absolutely absurd. It sounds like a Jussie Smollett part two. You’re going to drag the people through something like this?” Lake said when asked by the media about the accusation.

“I can’t believe she would blame my amazing people, blame me for something like that,” Lake also said. “I don’t even know where her campaign office is. I’m assuming it’s in a basement somewhere, because that’s where she’s been campaigning. You guys are despicable for falling into that trap.”

The break-in, and Hobbs’ accusations, came after a new poll showed that Lake is leading Hobbs by double digits.

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Undercover video EXPOSES dirty Democrat plan to win midterms — and how it could BACKFIRE spectacularly


BLAZETV STAFF | October 28, 2022

Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/shows/the-news-why-it-matters/kari-lake-project-veritas/

(Left) Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images (Right) Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images

On “The News & Why It Matters,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales and guests Jaco Booyens and Grant Stinchfield discussed a new undercover video from Project Veritas that exposed a Democrat Party plan to help “extreme” Trump-endorsed Republican candidates, including Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, win the primaries because they thought they would be easier to defeat in the general election.

In a video posted on the Project Veritas YouTube channel this week, Democratic Arizona gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs’ twin sister, Becky Hobbs, can be heard explaining how the Democrat Party “across the country” donated to certain Republican candidates they saw as “extremist” in an effort to give Democrat candidates a better chance of winning.

“So, all across the country, Democrat candidates — not candidates themselves but the [Democrat] Party — was putting money in [Republican] primaries, into the races of the extreme Trump-endorsed candidates, as opposed to the moderate Republicans that were running, because they wanted those extremists to win,” Hobbs said. “They knew that the Dems had a better chance of winning their races against the extremist candidates than they did against the moderate Republicans.”

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Katie Hobbs’ Twin Sister Says Democrat Party Funded ‘Extreme’ Trump Endorsed Candidates www.youtube.com

“Everyone knew that Katie had a better chance to win against Kari Lake. Everyone wanted Kari Lake to be the nominee … so, it was kind of like a sigh of relief when Kari Lake actually ended up winning,” Hobbs added.

“You just picked a bear,” Jaco said of the Democrats who thought Kari Lake would be easy to defeat. “I believe [Lake] is going to take it. I really believe she’s going to win.”

Watch the video clip below to catch the conversation or find full episodes of “The News & Why It Matters” here. Can’t watch? Download the podcast here.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=640747064444635

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco


A.F. Branco Cartoon – I’m Not With Her

A.F. BRANCO | on October 27, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-im-not-with-her/

Democrats like election-Denier Hillary Clinton calling out Conservatives like Kari Lake for denying elections.

03 Election Denier AC 1080a
Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2022

DONATE to A.F.Branco Cartoons – Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.

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“Put Down Hunter’s Crack Pipe” – Kari Lake Tells Anti-Trump Consultants And Media To Pound Sand, Hugs President Trump At Mesa, Arizona Rally


By Jordan Conradson | Published October 10, 2022

Read more at https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/10/put-hunters-crack-pipe-kari-lake-tells-anti-trump-consultants-media-pound-sand-hugs-president-trump-mesa-arizona-rally/

Photo by: Bobby Bushcraft

Last night, Arizona Gubernatorial Candidate Kari Lake was brought up on stage with President Trump during his Save America rally in Mesa, Arizona, and she showed him how much she loves him with a big hug.

“I know for a fact President Trump loves Arizona, but President Trump, I think Arizona loves you even more. I really do,” said Kari Lake as the crowd erupted with cheers.

Lake called out the “know-nothing consultants” and the Fake News Media that says she needs to distance herself from President Trump, saying they need to “put down Hunter’s crack pipe.”

The Gateway Pundit previously reported on an epic interview where Kari told the crackheads at CNN, “You really need to put down the crack pipe, Hunter’s crack pipe. You really believe Joe Biden won by 81 million votes?”

TRENDING: MUST SEE: Maria Bartiromo DESTROYS Democrat Debbie Dingell on Joe Biden’s Open Borders — LEAVES HER STAMMERING (VIDEO)

WATCH: AZ Gubernatorial Candidate Kari Lake WRECKS CNN: “You Really Need To Put Down The Crackpipe”

She then promised to never back away from President Trump or the people of Arizona as she hugged President Trump.

Her opponent, racist Katie Hobbs, tweeted about Lake and President Trump Last night, attacking them and claiming “the 2020 election was the most secure in AZ history,” which is a complete lie.

No matter how many times Donald Trump and Kari Lake deny the truth (including at today’s rally), it won’t change the fact the 2020 election was the most secure in AZ history. Arizona will always be a model for free, fair elections — it will not be a breeding ground for more lies.

— Katie Hobbs (@katiehobbs) October 10, 2022

The Gateway Pundit reported extensively on the Maricopa County election audit, which found hundreds of thousands of fraudulent, illegal, or questionable ballots were counted. Katie Hobbs acted as the Arizona audit’s biggest opponent, fighting transparency and voter integrity every step of the process.

Hobbs is also a left-wing extremist who publicly referred to Republicans as “neo-Nazis” in the past. She now labels anybody who questions the 2020 election results a “conspiracy theorist.”

Hobbs must step down from her role as Secretary of State in her own election for governor, but she refuses. She will likely attempt to cheat again, just like in 2020, and Arizona needs to outnumber the massive voter fraud.

President Trump called Kari Lake up on stage with him last night, and the crowd went wild chanting her name. Here, she made a promise to stick with President Trump’s America First agenda and never step away from the people of Arizona.

Lake: Oh man, Arizona, you’re too good to me. Do you love this guy or what? I know for a fact President Trump loves Arizona, but President Trump, I think Arizona loves you even more. I really do. Is that right? Why wouldn’t we love him? Think about it, let’s go back in history here just a few years. record low inflation. Our 401K’s looks great. I just talked to a neighbor who’s lost a third of his retirement savings since Joe Biden took office. We were doing great. Our kids were safe because our streets were safe. He supported the police. We had great times under President Trump, and we miss you so much, President Trump. Now I gotta tell you, I have some of these know-nothing consultants who tell me, “You know, you really need to back away from President Trump right now.” And I say to them, “put down Hunter’s crack pipe right now.” Wouldn’t it be horrible? Wouldn’t it be horrible? What would it say about my character if I stepped away from my friends? If I step away from my friends, that means I would step away from you, and I will never step away from the people of Arizona. And so, for those know-nothing consultants and the media, I want to show you what it looks like when I step away from President Trump.

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Several Trump-Backed Candidates Win Their Primaries with Others Too Close to Call


By SHELBY TALCOTT, SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT | August 03, 2022

Read more at https://dailycaller.com/2022/08/03/donald-trump-candidates-win-primaries-republicans-gibbs-masters/

FILE PHOTO: Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during the Turning Point USA's (TPUSA) Student Action Summit (SAS) in Tampa, Florida, U.S. July 23, 2022. REUTERS/Marco Bello/File Photo
REUTERS/Marco Bello/File Photo

Several Trump-backed candidates came out ahead in Tuesday’s primaries, with some races notching wins for the former president as he publicly eyes a 2024 run. One of the most notable wins for Trump came in Michigan, where his endorsed candidate John Gibbs defeated Republican Rep. Peter Meijer, who voted to impeach Trump in 2020. Gibbs previously worked under Trump as the acting assistant secretary in the Department of Housing and Urban Development and backs the former president’s unfounded claims that the election was stolen.

Meijer is the second House Republican who voted for Trump’s impeachment to lose a primary, with the first coming in June after Trump-endorsed state Rep. Russell Fry beat out South Carolina Rep. Tom Rice.

Other Trump-endorsed candidates who won Tuesday evening include Arizona’s Blake Masters, a venture capitalist running for a Senate seat, Republican Michigan gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon and Arizona state legislator Mark Finchem, who is running in the state’s GOP secretary of state primary.

FILE PHOTO: Arizona Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters speaks during former U.S. President Donald Trump's rally ahead of Arizona primary elections, in Prescott Valley, Arizona, U.S., July 22, 2022. REUTERS/Rebecca Noble/File Photo

FILE PHOTO: Arizona Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters speaks during former U.S. President Donald Trump’s rally ahead of Arizona primary elections, in Prescott Valley, Arizona, U.S., July 22, 2022. REUTERS/Rebecca Noble/File Photo

Attorney General Eric Schmitt also won Tuesday evening in Missouri for the GOP Senate primary. Trump’s “endorsement” in this race was chaotic, with the former president issuing a statement roughly 24 hours before the primary that endorsed “ERIC” – the name of Tuesday’s winner but also the name of his opponent, Eric Greitens, who has been riddled with scandals in recent years. (RELATED: Missouri Governor Resigns Amid Sexual Misconduct Scandal)

In Arizona, Republican Rep. Paul Gosar snagged a Trump endorsement and won Tuesday’s primary, though his race was considered fairly safe ground.

While the former president saw success in Tuesday’s primary, some of his picks are still battling it out as of early Wednesday morning. Trump-endorsed Arizona Rep. David Schweikert is projected to win his race, according to Decision Desk, but former TV news anchor Kari Lake’s race remains too close to call.

Lake is running against Karrin Taylor Robson, who was endorsed by former Vice President Mike Pence.

Still, Trump’s picks do not appear infallible. Washington state Reps. Jaime Herrera Beutler and Dan Newhouse – two more Republican lawmakers who voted to impeach the former president – so far appear to be ahead in their primaries against Trump-backed challengers, though the races have not yet been called. (RELATED: Trump Endorses Joe Kent For Congress Over Republican Incumbent Jamie Herrera Beutler)

Overall, Trump has endorsed over 200 candidates across the country, according to The New York Times. In competitive races, his record has been mixed, The Times also noted, perhaps representing the broader debate within the party regarding its loyalty to the former president.

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WATCH: Trump-Endorsed Kari Lake on Stage CALLS OUT Pence-Endorsed RINO Primary Opponent For “Duping THOUSANDS Of People Out of Money” – She Was the Very Next Speaker


By Jordan Conradson | Published July 19, 2022

Read more at https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/07/watch-trump-endorsed-kari-lake-stage-calls-pence-endorsed-rino-primary-opponent-duping-thousands-people-money-next-speaker/

Trump-Endorsed Arizona Gubernatorial frontrunner Kari Lake called out her billionaire RINO primary opponent in person for scamming thousands of American senior citizens out of their money. This was right before Karrin Taylor Robson spoke at the 78th Annual Mohave County Central Republican Committee Picnic last week. Robson is losing BIG, and she is desperate for grassroots support.

The Gateway Pundit recently conducted a poll with Cygnal Polling which found that Kari Lake and Trump-Endorsed Blake Masters for U.S. Senate both hold a steady double-digit lead over her primary opponents.

EXCLUSIVE Gateway Pundit-Cygnal Poll: Trump-Endorsed Candidates Kari Lake and Blake Masters Hold Double Digit Leads In Arizona Primary Elections

Kari Lake is Trump-Endorsed, and she is the only candidate with the guts to talk about the Rigged and Stolen 2020 Presidential Election. Because of this and her aggressive stances on other issues, Arizona loves her.

The Arizona State Media is pushing bogus polls in favor of her opponent to set the grounds for another rigged election.

Karrin Taylor Robson is a weak, pathetic RINO endorsed by Arizona Governor RINO Doug Ducey and Turncoat Mike Pence, who both certified the Fraudulent 2020 Election. Like other weak Republicans, Karrin Robson refuses to admit that the 2020 Election was stolen and incorrectly certified.

In order to save her failing campaign, Robson has turned to the “lowest of lows,” ripping off elderly American citizens with fraudulent text message fundraising schemes.

The Gateway Pundit recently reported that Kari Lake exposed Robson for using phone messaging alerts that purport to back various conservative causes to trick elderly conservatives into donating to her failing campaign.

WATCH: “Karrin, SHAME ON YOU” – Trump-Endorsed Kari Lake EXPOSES Her Ducey-Endorsed RINO Primary Opponent For Swindling Elderly Americans In Unethical Fundraising Scheme

According to Lake, she’s been doing this since August 2021, and over 1200 people have been refunded for their donations to Robson’s shady campaign.

“People are still figuring it out, and hundreds more this last reporting period figured out they were being swindled and demanded refunds,” said Kari Lake.

Kari released her exposé at the same moment that she called Robson out live at an event so that Robson would be totally unprepared and uncoached to deal with it. Lake told The Gateway Pundit that “without that coaching, she literally was speechless” when she took the stage immediately afterward.

Robson doesn’t even need this money. She already has so much money that she’s been caught donating thousands to elect democratic candidates up and down the ballot. She donated to Democrats in 2020, and she even donated to elect radical leftist anti-police Mayor Kate Gallego in 2019.

 The Arizona Democratic Party recently thanked Robson in a statement for donating thousands of dollars to elect liberal Democrats “as recently as 2020.”

Arizona Democratic Party Thanks Ducey-Endorsed RINO Primary Candidate For Her “Longtime Financial Support To Help ELECT DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES UP AND DOWN THE BALLOT”

Her campaign is also funded by her husband, billionaire developer Ed Robson, and Anti-Lake Super PACs funded by Arizona’s elite. Robson and the PACs that support her are each dumping millions into attack ads against Kari Lake.

Lake gave us the following statement.

Lake: She got up on stage, and she didn’t have any response to it because there is no response. She is swindling elderly people out of their social security check. There is no response to that. The sick part is that she didn’t even need the money. Her husband is giving her a “blank check.” She did this in order to trick people, so it looks like she has grassroots support when she has none. Nobody wants her, and she’s trying to make it look like they do, and it’s really disgusting, frankly.

She is a closet liberal, and she is going to destroy this state if she gets anywhere near the Governor’s office. And we are not going to let her buy this election with a bunch of lies, and her ads, and the people need to be aware of it. She’s trying to deflect from what she’s been up to with all these bogus ads on me.  I frankly think she and Katie Hobbs would be just as bad for the state. The RINOs and the Socialists are just as bad for the state.

America First all the way.

Recently, days before dropping out and endorsing Robson, RINO Matt Salmon admitted that Robson has a “blank check” and she is trying to buy the election.

Lake posted the video to her rumble, where she called Robson out straight to her face. The crowd cheered on Lake’s savage remarks.

Robson had to take the stage after this:

Lake: Karrin, where are you? We want answers to why you’re duping thousands of people out of money. It’s wrong. Here’s the sad thing, guys. She doesn’t need the money. The sad thing is, she’s being funded by a billionaire. She doesn’t need to dupe senior citizens out of their paycheck. But she did it to trick people into thinking she has grassroots support. It is unethical and it’s outrageous, and I think she should give every single one of them a refund. Everyone deserves a refund. I had to lay that out because you got to know who’s on the ballot. We cannot put an unethical person with no integrity who is trying to buy this election on the ballot. We can’t put her in the governor’s office. We’re at a crossroads in Arizona, guys. We’re at a crossroads whether we want to go back to the McCain style, McCain Mafia running the show, or do we want to go America first? I don’t want to go back to an Arizona where the high-price McCain consultants are running the show. I want to go back to an Arizona where We The People are in charge of our government. 

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