Recorder Stephen Richer sued Lake for defamation, but she says he can’t because he’s an elected official
CAITLIN SIEVERS
Arizona Mirror
Failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake says that it doesn’t matter whether the statements she made about Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer are false and his defamation lawsuit against her should be tossed out of court because of a state law curtailing public officials from suing their critics.
In a motion filed on Monday, Lake asked Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Jay Adleman to dismiss Richer’s suit because she says it violates Arizona’s Strategic Action Against Public Participation law, commonly referred to as an anti-SLAPP statute.
“An Anti-SLAPP motion is not an attempt to adjudicate falsity, but to avoid the burden of having to justify statements concerning core political speech,” Lake said in the filing.
Lake and her lawyers said in the filing that Richer’s suit should be dismissed because he is a “state actor” who brought the suit to “deter, retaliate against, and prevent Defendants’ lawful exercise of their free speech rights on the core public issue of election integrity.”
While Richer filed the suit as a private citizen, Lake and her lawyers argued that, because the content of the suit revolves around his work as Maricopa County recorder, he should still be considered a “state actor.”
But Craig Morgan, a Phoenix lawyer who represented Secretary of State Adrian Fontes in Lake’s suit challenging the election, says he believes that Lake’s motion stretches the intended purpose of the anti-SLAPP statute.
