'I Think it Makes Them Look Guilty': Election Officials Impede AZ Audit, Kari Lake Calls Them Out
Kari Lake was the Phoenix area’s top-rated news anchor before resigning early this year over the establishment media’s left-wing bias in a move that made national headlines.
Only a few months later, Lake announced her decision to run for governor of Arizona.
On Saturday, Lake attended the “Rally to Protect Our Elections” in downtown Phoenix, an event hosted by the conservative group Turning Point USA and featuring former President Donald Trump.
During the rally, Lake spoke with The Western Journal about the Maricopa County presidential election audit.
In her opinion, one of the more troubling revelations from the audit has been the county’s lack of transparency.
“The way we’re seeing our public officials, our elected officials, reacting, I think it makes them look very guilty,” Lake told The Western Journal.
“They’re not acting like innocent people.”
During an exclusive interview with The Western Journal conducted on Thursday, Arizona Senate President Karen Fann revealed that “Maricopa County has intentionally done everything in their power to sabotage [the audit], to withhold information” and “to be less than honest with the public” regarding the audit.
The county has yet to turn over blue tally sheets, chain-of-custody documentation for ballots and other information related to the routers used by the county’s election department, Fann said.
“Why aren’t they talking to us about it? Why aren’t they saying, ‘Yeah, we do believe there could be these problems here,’ but they’re not,” Fann told The Western Journal.
“Instead, they’ve set up a Twitter account on social media, and working in concert with the liberal media, [they’re] trying to cover any mistakes that maybe they had made, or anything — I don’t understand why they want to fight this out or do this, trying to defend themselves on a Twitter site, rather than just sit down with us and say, ‘Let’s go through this and see if we can find some explanations for you.’”
Given the county’s lack of transparency, Lake is “very much looking forward to seeing what the audit shows.”
“What I’ve already seen is very disturbing,” Lake said.
“We need an overhaul of our election, from top to bottom.”
During the exclusive interview, Fann revealed a number of the audit’s findings thus far.
Among them: Some ballots were printed on the wrong paper, allowing ink from markers used to indicate votes to bleed-through, which could have invalidated them; county officials didn’t have access to their own voting systems’ passwords — only Dominion Voting Systems did; and in the 2018 election, county officials had “serious problems with Adrian Fontes,” the county recorder who then went on to oversee the 2020 election.
If fraud is found, Lake is adamant that those guilty need to be held responsible for their actions.
“And anybody, if fraud is found, anybody who was involved in that needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Lake said. “I don’t care how high it goes.”
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