After reading this judge's order in detail in the Kari Lake vs. Hobbs Trial, it is a useless exercise to try to counter it with evidence because he didn’t use any to come to his decision. What an absolute disgrace it truly is.
The judge ignored all of the legitimate evidence of intentional wrongdoing presented in the case, ignored perjury right in front of him by witnesses from Maricopa County, and glossed over serious election issues that were the law to have been followed correctly, would have constituted a new election at a minimum, and a Lake victory at a maximum.
So, instead, let's talk about what the order did not address, which is much more indicative of willful ignorance on the part of the judge, who even was stunned at some of what was presented, as evidenced by his reaction in open court. How you leave any of this out is beyond me.
For this article, we will use the judge's interpretation of the law, which as barnes_law points out, is inherently flawed. I know KariLake's attorneys are working on the appeal now. I am not an attorney, but I will give it a go.
We are going to analyze the Day 1 testimony. We are going to start with Stephen Richer, the Maricopa county recorder. He testified that when early ballots leave polling centers, no one knows how many there are. (This is a problem with their process, clearly).
Richer is asked if he recalls sending an email stating he couldn’t reconcile the SOS listing of votes with the number of votes Maricopa received. Remember, they were throwing out numbers of ballots with confidence in the press.
He is then asked if he had anyone from his office call Runbeck asking how many ballots they processed. He waffles at particular terminology— standard wriggling.
He is then asked whether or not he knows if the AG has opened up an investigation into the 2022 election. He replies with a resounding “No.” That’s interesting, given a letter that went out asking many questions in re: to this election. They stop questioning him, then.
Richer is being cross-examined, which isn’t material, but he is asked why he isn’t dressed in a suit. He replies he is on his first vacation in 4 years (GASP) and didn’t have time to get one before testimony. Remember, this was 12/21. He knew by at least 12/16 of the potential.
The above is taken from the motion to Quash his subpoena and shows how smarmy and shady these people are. If I had an inkling I might need to testify in a trial like this, I would’ve packed clothes for it, or at least a nice top.
They immediately start by trying to shift blame for non-responsive public records requests.
He then is asked about the process for counting early votes and why they can not be counted before they go through the vetting process. (All of this is important, we are getting the foundation down right now.) Remember, this is a cross-examination; plaintiffs called him as a witness.
He is then asked about the Chain of Custody for these ballots. He walks through the process AS IT SHOULD happen. This isn’t what happened, as we will learn in just a bit. Also, he says a “bipartisan” team. As Adam Carter, who was with me through the live stream coverage of day one of the trial, said, “bi-partisan is Page and Strzok.”
I will assume he meant one from each party, but that is being generous with how these folks use words. You want a partisan team - one Democrat and one Republican, etc... Otherwise, you end up with Richer, who calls himself a Republican but starts an anti-Lake PAC.
Then, Defense asks Richer his party affiliation, even though I don’t know how it is relevant. Still, they brought it up and asked him directly if he purposefully sabotaged the election. I am sure that if he did, he would’ve told us all just then. Also, they bring up printer issues.
We produce records because “it’s the appropriate thing to do, and we have nothing to hide.” (It stands to reason then that if they did not produce records, it would be because they did have something to hide…More on this in a moment.)
He asks one more time about the printers. And, we are on to redirect. Redirect is where the Plaintiff (they called this witness) can ask a few follow-up questions regarding the testimony in cross-examination to clean up and hammer down anything they want.
On redirect, Richer is asked if he opposed Lake for governor. Richer doesn’t answer that question. Then he is asked about the PAC he started to spend money opposing Lake. He states it is 100% false that he started said PAC. Oh really?? Let’s unpack this a bit.
Exhibit “A.” We will get to the “generous donors” in a moment.
Exhibit “B”
Stephen Richer creates PAC to back ‘pro-democracy’ Republicans
And now to the “generous donor,” Pro-Democracy Republican top donor was a man named Francis Najafi. Who else did he donate to?
He spent about $174k this cycle, a lot of it going to none other than Katie Hobbs, ActBlue, and the AZ Democratic Party. Is perjury a thing anymore, or….
Back to testimony. Next, Plaintiff calls Robert Jarrett, the “co-elections director” responsible for tabulation and all in-person voting, as well as warehousing, training poll workers, etc.
Jarrett is responsible for logic and accuracy testing and programming of the tabulators etc., as well as training. This is the guy.
Seems like a pervasive process to make sure tabulators are working. Jarrett says thousands of test ballots were sent through the equipment to ensure they are accurately programmed to tabulate them. He will get into that in more detail now.
Because Maricopa county moved to vote centers, all 12k of the potential ballots need to be ready to be printed depending on what voter is voting. They call this “ballot on demand.”
Jarrett testified that they performed logic and accuracy testing before Election Day. This testimony is essential.
This is very important. The question asked is, “What would happen if a ballot was printed out of a ballot-on-demand printer at the vote center if it was printed with a 19” image on 20” paper and run through the tabulator?” Read the question carefully.
Jarrett dodges the question, and Defense comes to the rescue. The defense actually states that to answer, he would have to speculate. We know this to be false now, he doesn’t have to speculate, and Jarrett knows that.
“…the timing marks on the ballot matter…” “There were no 19-inch ballot images installed on ballot on-demand printers.”
People with nothing to hide generally don’t try this hard to pretend there weren’t problems. Less than a minute after this, he will contradict himself. He states now: “I don’t recall ballots — issues with ballots being rejected” That is implausible.
Here he contradicts the answer he had just given. This large portion of testimony is about their process for forecasting turnout on Election Day, whether they factor in potential issues, etc. But I would like to keep the focus on the 19/20” ballot image discrepancy.
Again, here is an opportunity to address the image issue. Instead, he pretends the only printing issue was some dark marks printed on ballots that the tabulators picked up. He doesn’t think these printer issues could be “couched” as a disruption. This isn’t believable.
In fact, it is so unbelievable that Plaintiff spends a significant amount of time trying to get Jarrett to acknowledge what even his boss said about the issues on Election Day in Maricopa County. He is testifying in complete denial. It’s overt. It’s patently absurd.
Did you hear of any reports of a 19” ballot image being printed on a 20-inch paper?” (My emphasis added)
A: “I DID NOT.”
Q: “If that occurred, would that be a failure…”
A: “I’M NOT AWARE OF IT OCCURRING, AND I’D BE SURPRISED…” Save this. Bookmark it. File it.
Jarrett again doubles down. The wording here is crucial. Please take note of what I underline in red. Plaintiff asks, “If a 19-inch Ballot Image was put on a 20” paper….”
Jarrett: “…asking me to speculate about things... no knowledge of occurring.”
Jarrett is then cross-examined by the Defense, which is interesting because they will also call him as a witness. This is one of the first times that the “horror” of voting on Election Day is introduced to the court.
This is the Defendant attempting to conflate two things. No one was alleging that a 19” ballot was designed for this election, and both of them know that. They acknowledged they knew the difference in their answers to the questions. This is a weak attempt to create confusion.
On redirect, the Plaintiffs take the “Election Day” voter insinuation and prove that it was immaterial anyway because the forecast and the voters who showed to vote were adequate. And I am going to take an aside here for a moment as well:
The idea that voting on Election Day is to blame for problems at the polls is so utterly contemptuous it literally infuriates me. It isn’t the first time defendants have done this, and it needs to be stomped down. Election. Day. It’s just preposterous they’d attempt to criminalize it.
We are again going to get the 19/20” debate down and codified. This is probably one of the most essential pieces of evidence at trial, and the spin placed on it needs to be adequately addressed and made to go viral. I will do that succinctly at the end and in the course.
Plaintiff wanted to get on the record that the ballot definition resides in a central location, on a laptop connected to the printers. Very important and is one of the things this judge ignored. There’s no excuse for it. You’ll see why as we get into Clay Parikh now.
I will not thread out Clay Parikh’s testimony as it relates to his extensive experience, technical knowledge, security clearances, and current and former positions. However, this portion is the first time in the trial that we hear the words “root cause analysis.”
Parikh has done root cause analysis often in the past, including for the Army. Some of his work has been used in criminal cases.
Parikh chose ballots from six vote centers and was forced to look at duplicated ballots in some instances. This is where a lot was lost in confusion, purposefully in my opinion, during the cross from the Defense.
In his order, the judge made a lot of noise about how Parikh “admitted” that problem votes were, in fact, tabulated. He ignored the reason for the problem in the first place and completely glossed over the fact that Parikh testified that they lost the duped ballots!
This is not only a huge issue with vote totals and issues there, but it is also a massive deal with Chain of Custody— And the judge just completely ignored it. Not just the judge; I’ll show you where else there was an attempt to muddle this.
So here we have an expert witness who inspected the ballots as per court order, testifying that not only was there an issue with the ballots themselves (we will get there), but there is also a massive problem with the chain of custody, another count in the lawsuit and the judge ignores it.
Here Parikh testifies that because of the issues with finding ballots and time constraints, he didn’t get to do everything he wanted and was tasked to do. (This should set off alarm bells to any honest broker out there).
And we get our first loud objection from the defense. 48 of 113 ballots (spoiled ballots) had a 19” inch image printed on a 20” paper. A 19” image printed on a 20” paper, with no COS for the tabulated ballot. That isn’t all. He asks for spoiled ballots as well as originals.
Remember, this was impossible and could never happen, as per Jarrett. As a matter of fact, he had not heard of this happening even once, anywhere, ever. Unheard of. Speculative and impossible, he would be surprised if it ever occurred. Remember that.
Fourteen of fifteen duplicated ballots were 19” images printed on 20” paper. 14/15, with the remaining ballot, slightly torn and not 19” on 20” paper. Remember, there exists no chain of custody for the duped ballots. There’s no way to know what they were voted.
Indeed, it does misstate the testimony, and Liddy remembers clearly because it was when he realized his witness was in the midst of perjury and they would need gymnastics to clean it up. Jarrett said, “that would be a mistake,” and he was coached to use that word.
See, “mistakes” aren’t intentional. They are just a big “WHOOPS” on a consequential and hotly contested mid-term election for Governor, US House, SOS, AG, etc, so on and so forth. Whoops!
“Would there be any way for this to happen by accident?”
A: “NO, SIR”
Q: Why?
A: “I reviewed the evidence, and the printers are configured by script.”
Full stop. This was completely ignored in the Judge’s order as though it never happened.
Parikh testifies that this would likely cause a paper jam error, even if there were no paper in the machine. He interviewed a tech who experienced this very thing.
Again and again- could this have been an accident? Could it be a mistake? On and on— the answer is always a very firm and definitive NO. It could not be an accident or a mistake. It was intentional. He also testified he witnessed many more like this as ballots were shuffled.
A: No, sir, there are only two ways it could happen, and I would need to forensically examine to figure out which of the two it was.
We move to cross-examination….
I want to get to the heart of the matter with cross-examination. Still, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that first, Parikh was questioned about who paid him, then about the Lindell cyber symposium, and then about the fact that he referred to a state record request as a FOIA incorrectly and that somehow means he doesn’t pay attention to detail.
Defense is asking about the lack of duplicated ballots for the 19” image ballots- please note he was talking directly to Jarrett about this. The same Jarrett who said this didn’t happen. This is unbelievable.
Here is where it all goes south with the misrepresentation, and the Plaintiffs object as such. The defense won’t let him finish his statement. He obviously means here that the dupes should be there; I don’t recall him ever testifying Jarrett said it would take 6 hours, and this is a mess.
Here Parikh attempts to explain what he meant, and Liddy interrupts him mid-sentence so that he can not. He wants to obfuscate the Chain of Custody issues here as much as possible. I don’t know where he got this “6 hours” thing- he testified he was told a week.
And this is where we begin to see the “shrink to fit” explanation Maricopa comes up with for the thing that never happened ever, the 19” image on a 20” paper. Parikh explains why this isn’t plausible and how it would break their procedure and protocol even if it were.
There is a back-and-forth between Liddy and Parikh here, and it gets complicated. Liddy is asking Parikh to answer a question whose premise isn’t technically possible, and Parikh can’t answer it.
Cross-examination ends this way. Redirect is next, and I will move to Day two and Jarrett on the stand again. The 19/20” ballot issue is the most important thing, in my opinion, and while Ms. Honey’s testimony is significant, this issue here is the massive one.
Redirect focuses first on the integrity of a ballot. The defense attempted to minimize a duplication- it isn’t a small thing. You are relying on someone to accurately transpose your vote onto a new ballot because of their mistake, and they didn’t even keep Chain of Custody on them.
Now Plaintiff clears up the “you didn’t ask for dupes” line of questioning... Technically, it was already spelled out in the process; it was all supposed to have been handled. He did ask for the dupes, but Liddy didn’t let him finish. He asked Jarrett and...
“You heard Jarrett testify there was NO WAY a 19” image could be on a 20” paper, right?”
A: Yes
“There is no way those could have been tabulated, right?”
A: “There is no way a 19-inch image on 20-inch paper would be accepted by a tabulator,”
This was ignored by the judge.
Parikh examined early votes as well. There were no 19” images on 20” paper with early voting. It didn’t happen, only with Print on Demand.
This was the most important testimony of it all so far because it completely obliterates their “fit to page, shrink to fit” excuse. If there is only a 20” ballot image and only 20” paper, shrinking the 20” ballot image to fit a 20” paper would have done nothing.
The only other way their explanation would be possible is by malfeasance.
I am now going to move to the Day 2 testimony of Jarrett, and we are going to place his Day 1 and Day 2 testimony side by side. I am going to end with this because it sums up everything.
People who have nothing to hide don’t lie on the witness stand. People with nothing to hide don’t neglect to share information that would be helpful to testimony when directly asked.
Jarret on Day 1 Vs. Jarret on Day 2
Day 1 v. Day 2:
He neglected to say anything about this; they are in the middle of a root cause analysis, didn’t inform the public, didn’t admit it under direct questioning and committed perjury on the stand.
The 19” ballot image on a 20” paper disenfranchised more than 17 thousand voters in Maricopa county, and there was no way it could have happened if it wasn’t intentional. The judge glossed over this completely. I am awaiting the appeal.
