Photos by Gage Skidmore | Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0
After a bitter court battle, Kari Lake has entered a settlement agreement with Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer in a defamation lawsuit over Lake’s false accusations that he helped to steal the 2022 race for Arizona governor from her.
Lake, a Republican endorsed by President-elect Donald Trump in 2022 and in this year’s run for the U.S. Senate, is one of Arizona’s most prominent purveyors of the “Big Lie” that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump. She brought similar allegations about her own loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs in the race for governor two years ago, specifically highlighting Richer’s supposed involvement.
The terms of the settlement are confidential. The Washington Post first reported that a settlement had been reached, and the Arizona Mirror independently verified the settlement.
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“The matter has been settled and was resolved to the satisfaction of both parties,” a spokesperson for Richer’s legal team told the Mirror in a written statement.
Richer sought damages to reimburse him and his wife for the thousands of dollars he said they spent to install new security features in their home after he said Lake’s false statements spurred threats of violence and harassment.
Additionally, Richer asked for an award of punitive damages, compensation for damage to his reputation and mental health, and for Lake to admit that her claims about him were false.
Richer was elected county recorder in 2020, and lost his bid for reelection in the July Republican primary to Arizona state Rep. Justin Heap. Heap never directly admitted that he believed that the 2020 and 2022 elections in Arizona were stolen from top Republican candidates, but he voted for bills based on election conspiracy theories, including ones promoted by Lake.
News of the settlement came just days after Lake danced around a formal concession to Democratic U.S. Congressman Ruben Gallego in the race for U.S. Senate, after he won by more than 79,000 votes. She still hasn’t conceded the governor’s race that happened more than two years ago.
Richer filed the defamation suit in June 2023, after Lake spent months falsely accusing Richer of rigging the race for governor against her.
Lake repeatedly claimed — without evidence — that Richer was responsible for 300,000 “illegal, invalid, phony or bogus” early ballots being counted in Maricopa County. She spent two years challenging the results of the 2022 election in which she was defeated by more than 17,000 votes, but lost every trial and appeal in the case.
In December 2023, attorneys for Lake asked a Maricopa County Superior Court judge to dismiss the case, arguing that Lake’s claims were “rhetorical hyperbole” and not meant to be taken as facts. But the judge was not convinced and allowed the case to proceed.
In March, Lake defaulted in the case, legally conceding that her claims about Richer were false, even as she continued to say the opposite in public statements on conservative podcasts and radio shows.
After that, Richer and Lake entered into a monthslong struggle to compel the other to turn over evidence that could be used to present to a jury to determine how much Richer was owed in damages.
Although Lake initially claimed that she was excited to fight Richer in the case and for the discovery process, she repeatedly refused to hand over documents in the case and said that all emails pertinent to the case in her Kari Lake for Arizona campaign account had been “purged” when the campaign was dissolved. While one of her lawyers falsely claimed that Kari Lake for Arizona ceased to exist almost a year before the defamation suit was filed, leaving her free from an obligation to retain evidence.
The campaign filed its last finance report in early 2024, and was spending money through Dec. 31, 2023, more than six months after Richer filed the suit.
When the settlement was reached, Lake was quickly approaching a Nov. 22 deadline to provide a sworn statement to the court describing when her campaign emails were “purged” and at whose direction.
An attorney for Lake’s husband Jeffrey Halperin, who was a defendant in the lawsuit alongside Lake and her campaign, attempted last week to get the case dismissed, accusing Richer of ignoring a court order to turn over evidence that quantified how much he believed he was owed in damages.
The attorney also accused Richer of destroying evidence, saying he permanently deleted his X, formerly Twitter account after the Nov. 5 election, cutting the defense’s access to relevant social media posts.
But Richer had only deactivated his account, reactivating it less than a week later.
A spokesperson for Lake’s Senate campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
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