Since her clear and unequivocal loss in the race for Arizona governor, Kari Lake has traveled the country posing and parading like a victorious hero.

As a candidate, the former Fox TV host was everything

–

on

former

President Trump and his big lie about the 2020 election theft. Her brutal duplicity probably cost Lake

governor

contest

at load

November.

But she characteristically refuses to admit defeat, sues after being thrown out of court, and widely spreads false allegations of voter fraud and other conspiratorial nonsense.

Her actions are both amoral and unoriginal. As soon as Lake read from a

TelePrompter teleprompter

; now she parrots Trump.

Fortunately, she lost her election bid.

Now she could face legal consequences.

Last week was a hit

Arizona

election official

in Arizona

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer filed a defamation lawsuit against his fellow Republican, saying Lake’s blatant lies cost him friends and lifelong relationships. Her malicious incitement has also led to death threats, he said, and harassment directed at him

and his wife.

Instead of accepting political defeat, instead of looking for a new job, [Lake] has sought to undermine confidence in our elections and mobilized millions of her followers against me, Richer wrote in the Arizona Republic. “Her slanderous accusations have unleashed violent vitriol and other dire consequences.”

Lake lost in 2022 by more than 17,000 votes. Not much, as more than 2.5 million votes were cast. But the margin wasn’t exactly wafer-thin.

Her hodge-podge of untruths includes allegations that Richer manipulated its printing

Arizona

election ballots and “inserted” 300,000 false votes into the final count to prevent Republican candidates, including Lake, from winning. (During last year’s midterms, Arizona was ground zero for the frontal assault on democracy,

with fieldwork

a list of elections – denying candidates statewide who luckily were all defeated.)

Lake’s false claims were repeated countless times, the court documents, at political rallies, during podcasts and on social media. Richer is seeking unspecified monetary damages and an injunction finding that Lake’s statements were false and requiring her to delete them.

Naturally, she took to Twitter to respond.

“I’m exposing massive corruption in our elections and this son of a bitch is suing me. He wants to silence the US. Trump won in a landslide and so did I,” Lake wrote, mimicking the former president’s hostage’s punctuation.

Imitation is not just a form of flattery. Today it is the sum of Lake’s existence.

Of course she added a link asking for money. The grabbing never stops.

Lake performs an obvious one

,

bent-back campaign to be Trump’s running mate if he wins the 2024 Republican nomination. She is now a regular at Mar-a-Lago

,

and while Lake has yet to appear during the meal on a sandwich board that says “CHOOSE ME!!!” it is still relatively early in the campaign season.

Self-abasement is one thing, however pathetic it may be. Lake’s performance isn’t just sad

;,

it is dangerous, further eroding confidence in our threatened democratic system with a fusillade of baseless attacks. As Richer put it in the Arizona Republic, she is “throwing gasoline on the fire of untruths about our elections.”

Even more irresponsible, Lake almost called for an armed uprising as if one January 6 wasn’t bad enough after Trump’s indictment for his assault

by

classified documents.

“If you want to get to President Trump, you’re going to have to go through me” and millions of Americans “just like me,” Lake told a crowd of Trump worshipers in Georgia

. , adding:

“Other

…

most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA.

“

“That’s not a threat,” Lake said after making her threat. “That’s a public service announcement

.

“

The bar for winning a defamation case is rightly set high. However, it is not insurmountable.

Witness the $787.5 million Fox News coughed up to settle a lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems that was smeared with false allegations

That

the company’s equipment changed the vote from Trump to Joe Biden, costing the former president reelection.

The discovery process was revealing and exposed the mendacity of personalities like

Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and the now-fired Tucker Carlson, who privately questioned the stolen election narrative even as they recklessly promoted it on the air.

Who knows what will be revealed when

and or

when Lake is questioned under oath.

It is striking to see the boastful bombast of Trump, Rudy Giuliani and other former presidents.

lying accomplices when they play to an audience, as opposed to the embarrassment shown when they testify under penalty of perjury.

Richer may not prevail in his defamation suit against Lake.

But if it deters other prominent personalities from faking election fraud when they know better, it will have served a good purpose.