My sense tells me that Lakes chances of appeal will be summarily dismissed for lack of evidence unless an appellate judge exhibits some cojones. It will be another travesty of justice as we have seen in other cases the past two years. Lack of justice is a sign of the times. Look at the poor schleps denied bail for Jan 6 charges. Where is their guarantee of speedy trials? In New York, they’re letting violent criminals off without posting bail while in DC the Jan 6ers are DENIED bail. Look what happened to Derek Chauvin whose trial transpired in a courthouse surrounded by angry, violent hoodlums. What kind of legal defense was afforded to Chauvin?
THREAD: After reading this judges order in detail, 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. clerkofcourt.maricopa.gov/home/showpubli…
So, instead, lets 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 the purposes of this thread we are going to use the judges interpretation of the law, which as @barnes_law points out, is inherently flawed. I know @KariLake attorneys are working on the appeal now. I am NOT an attorney, but I am going to give it a go.
We are going to analyze 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 amount 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 them 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 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
Now Richer is on cross, and this isn’t material, but he is asked about 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 just goes to show how smarmy and shady these people are. If I had an INKLING I may need to testify in a trial like this, I would’ve packed CLOTHES for it, or at least a nice top. clerkofcourt.maricopa.gov/home/showpubli…
They immediately start in with 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 process of vetting. (All of this is important, we are getting foundation down right now.) Remember, this is cross exam, Plaintiffs called him as a witness.
He is then asked about COS 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 stream said, “bi-partisan is Page and Strzok.”
I am going to assume he meant one from each party, but that is being generous with the way 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, but they brought it up, and asks 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 in regards to the testimony given 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. 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’ RepublicansRepublican candidates who reject the false and baseless claims that the last election was rigged may have some extra financial support in the next one, courtesy of Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Ric…https://www.azmirror.com/2021/11/17/stephen-richer-creates-pac-to-back-pro-democracy-republicans/
And now to the “generous donor” Pro-Democracy Republicans top donor was a man named Francis Najafi. transparencyusa.org/az/pac/pro-dem…Who else did he donate to?
Pro-Democracy Republicans - Arizona PAC - Transparency USATHE ANSWERS YOU NEED ABOUT THE MONEY IN STATE POLITICShttps://www.transparencyusa.org/az/pac/pro-democracy-republicans-100676-pac
He spent about $174k this cycle, a lot of it going to none other than @katiehobbs and ActBlue, and the AZ Democratic Party. transparencyusa.org/az/donor/franc… Is perjury a thing anymore, or….
Francis Najafi - Arizona Donor - Transparency USATHE ANSWERS YOU NEED ABOUT THE MONEY IN STATE POLITICShttps://www.transparencyusa.org/az/donor/francis-najafi
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 the man responsible for logic and accuracy testing and programming of the tabulators etc, as well as training. This is the guy.
Seems like a very extensive process to make sure tabulators are working. Jarrett says thousands of test ballots through the equipment to make sure they are accurately programmed to tabulate the ballots. 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 testifies that they performed logic and accuracy testing before Election Day. This testimony is important.
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?”
Jarrett dodges the question, and Defense comes in to rescue. 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 was 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”
Here he contradicts the answer he had just given. This large portion of testimony is about their process for forecasting turnout on Election Day, and whether or not they factor in potential issues, etc. But I would like to keep focus on the 19/20” ballot image discrepancy.
Again, here is an opportunity to address the image issue, and instead he pretends the ONLY printing issue were some dark marks being printed on ballots that the tabulators picked up. He doesn’t think these printer issues could be “couched” as a disruption.
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.
NOTE: I have an appointment… I am not finished with this thread by a long shot, and I will continue today until I am. Short intermission, will be back ASAP.
Thread continued: Jarrett again doubles down. The wording here is very important. 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 be calling him as a witness. This is one of the first times that the “horror” of voting ON ELECTION DAY is introduced to the court.
I didn’t understand this line of questioning then, and still think it was meant as obfuscation. I have been very careful to highlight specific words being used when questions are asked. Plaintiff was very SPECIFIC, MULTIPLE times- a 19” IMAGE on a 20” ballot. (CONT)
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: (cont)
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 did 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 important pieces of evidence at trial, and the spin placed on it needs to be addressed properly and made to go viral. I am going to do that succinctly at the end, but also in 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 am not going to 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.
I want to make sure everyone is paying close attention to the testimony from here forward, INCLUDING in cross examination. If you are following this thread remember these next several tweets. Here is how Mr. Parikh chose the ballots he wanted to examine. Read this.
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 IMO during 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, it is 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 HUGE problem with chain of custody, another count in the lawsuit
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 be setting 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, impossible, 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 only remaining ballot being 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 the moment 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 was 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.
Is there any way you could be wrong about this?
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 would like to get to the heart of the matter with cross, but 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 records request as a FOIA (cont)
…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 Plaintiffs object as such. 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 even if it were it would break their procedure and protocol.
This interaction we are about to thread is the ONLY thing the judge took from the testimony we have reviewed so far. It’s absurd, because Parikh already testified there was no COS for the duped ballots.
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.
• • •
The state admitted they don’t know the number of ballots that leave the polls and are delivered to a private 3rd party.
That alone should invalidate the entire election.
They also admitted that a significant number of ballots were rejected from the counting process due to the ballot size being incorrect. Then an exports testified that it had to be intentional because the ballot reader size configuration is a coded script. Someone had to write it.
This is the biggest miscarriage of Justice. This judge most likely regrets allowing this to get into the public. This is why all past judges never allowed evidentiary hearings.
Kari Lake will lose again in appeal. IMO, if the case could obtain cert, she’d have her best chance of prevailing before the U.S. Supreme Court. Lake will lose in the 9th Circuit. Don’t get your hopes up. While it is possible after oral arguments that Lake may obtain Supreme Court certiori, the more likely scenario is that the case will be sent back to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal, the most liberal of circuit courts, for final judgment. While I think Kari Lake is destined to lose the case, there is another possibility, the word possibility emphasized, that during the high Court’s secret deliberations, one of the conservatives justices will aggressively support the cause. If this happens, the outlook could be very positive.
Scotus