Kari Lake declines to defend defamation lawsuit filed by Arizona election official

By JONATHAN J. COOPER
Associated Press

PHOENIX (AP) — Kari Lake, a Republican Senate candidate in Arizona who says she lost a 2022 race for governor because of fraud, is declining to defend against a defamation lawsuit filed by a top election official. Lake this week asked a judge to jump directly to the damages phase of the lawsuit filed by Republican Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer. The extraordinarily rare request for a default judgment seeks to bypass the opportunity to argue her statements were true or weren’t defamatory. The court had already rejected her motion to dismiss the case, and the Arizona Supreme Court declined to take her appeal.