'Reckless' election lawsuit from Lake, Finchem will cost their attorneys $122,000, judge rules

Lawyers for unsuccessful Arizona candidates Kari Lake and Mark Finchem will have to pay $122,200 for filing a baseless lawsuit attempting to ban the use of voting machines prior to the November election, a federal judge has ruled.

The ruling puts a dollar figure to sanctions ordered last year by Arizona U.S. District Court Judge John Tuchi and covers the legal costs by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.

Tuchi reduced the share of the sanctions owed by attorney Alan Dershowitz, who nevertheless vowed to appeal the order "to the Supreme Court."

Lake and Finchem, Republicans who lost to Democrats Gov. Katie Hobbs and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, respectively, won't have to pay any of the sanctions themselves. But their attorneys are accountable for filing a lawsuit in bad faith, said Deputy County Attorney Tom Liddy.

"These guys run a lawsuit with no evidence at all and waste $122,000 of taxpayer money — but now we got it back," Liddy said.

The ruling orders lawyers Andrew D. Parker and his law firm, Parker Daniels Kibort LLC, and Kurt B. Olsen and his law firm, Olsen Law PC, along with Dershowitz to together pay $122,200, except that Dershowitz's share of the sanctions is capped at $12,220. Parker, in responding to a request for comment, said he would appeal the decision.

It comes two months after other sanctions awards by judges in election challenges that they ruled had no justification. Finchem was ordered to pay $40,300, and his attorney another $7,400, for a frivolous lawsuit that sought to challenge the Nov. 8 election results. Olsen and another Lake attorney, Bryan Blehm, were ordered by the Arizona Supreme Court to pay $2,000 in sanctions for "unequivocally false" claims alleging 35,000 ballots were added to last year's election vote count.

Lake, Finchem sought to force counties to do hand count

Lawyers for Lake and Finchem filed a request for an injunction before last year's election that sought to force Maricopa and Pima counties to count all ballots by hand, despite a warning by county lawyers that the claims were too weak for a lawsuit.

In the 26-page order released Friday, Tuchi recounted his December 2022 ruling for sanctions, calling pursuit of the injunction "reckless." His sanction order was based on Arizona court rules that require lawyers to ensure court filings aren't made for improper purposes and that their claims are based on non-frivolous arguments.

Lake and Finchem filed the lawsuit in April 2022 as they pushed campaign messages that focused heavily on election conspiracies.

After last year's election, both Trump-endorsed candidates filed separate lawsuits to contest their own losses. Finchem's lawsuit was tossed out quickly but Lake was given two trials in which judges ruled that she failed to prove vote-counting machines were manipulated by county officials, chain-of-custody procedures for ballots were flawed or that county workers failed to verify voter signatures correctly.

Much of Tuchi's order covers Dershowitz's argument that he was not responsible for the poor vetting of the lawsuit before it was filed. Dershowitz had argued that he was just hired by Parker's law firm as a constitutional expert and consultant, limited to the concept that the inner workings of voting machines should have public scrutiny.

Dershowitz: 'I did absolutely nothing wrong'

Dershowitz agreed that his signature was present on court filings in the case, but that he used the term "of counsel" instead of "counsel" to describe his involvement in all but a few cases in which the term was accidentally left off. Tuchi said the term is more properly used to describe a lawyer's relationship to a law firm, not to an individual case.

"His involvement was cemented by the presence of his authorized signature on numerous filings, which he admittedly reviewed only briefly, if at all," Tuchi wrote in his order. "On the other hand, Mr. Dershowitz’s involvement in this case was indeed limited and he made an effort — albeit a misguided one — to communicate his limited role."

Tuchi also found the claim to be credible that Dershowitz didn't realize that Lake, Parker and pillow salesman Mike Lindell — who introduced Dershowitz to the case — were using Dershowitz's name and liberal credentials to bolster their claims. But because "courts are entitled to rely on (lawyers') signatures as certifications their filings are well-founded," Dershowitz deserved sanctioning, too, albeit at a lower amount, Tuchi ruled.

Dershowitz said he'd consulted on constitutional issues as "of counsel" for 50 years based on the advice of "leading" attorneys.

"I did absolutely nothing wrong," Dershowitz said in an email to The Arizona Republic. "If the judge had assessed me $1, I would have appealed. I will take the case to the Supreme Court."

Tuchi's order requires payment to Maricopa County within 30 days unless one of the parties files an appeal, in which case the payment order would go on hold until courts decide the fate of the appeal.

Reach the reporter at rstern@arizonarepublic.com or 480-276-3237. Follow him on Twitter @raystern.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Attorneys for Kari Lake, Mark Finchem sanctioned $122K for filing suit