As expected, after dismissing a number of serious and legitimate charges, then setting an impossibly high bar, the judge in Kari Lake’s lawsuit against Democrat Katie Hobbs and Maricopa County ruled against her and ordered that the election stand. This despite the fact that it could not have been more obviously botched if it had been run by blind chimpanzees. The judge put a number of extra-legal conditions on the case, such as demanding that the plaintiffs prove not just that the election was fatally flawed (which they did), but that it was intentional (the point of which I don’t get: should voters simply accept elections that are fatally flawed by incompetence?)

The ruling was so one-sided and unfair, some observers voiced suspicions that it was ghostwritten by Marc Elias, the Democrat lawyer in charge of destroying election integrity.

Blame the Voters!

For me, perhaps the most infuriating moment of the trial came when the Maricopa County Attorney claimed that “you reap what you sow” when you encourage your voters to wait until Election Day to vote, as if expecting to be able to vote on Election Day without facing hours-long lines and disenfranchisement is a crazy notion and somehow it’s the voters’ fault. This person doesn’t belong in a position of public responsibility; he belongs in an unemployment line.

‘Groundless’ is Not the Correct Adjective

Displaying a mind-boggling level of gall, Hobbs and the Maricopa morons are asking for sanctions on Lake to make her pay their legal bills, accusing her of launching a “groundless, 70-page election contest lawsuit” against them.

The fact that it included 70 pages of evidence, sworn witness testimony and whistleblower complaints suggests that “groundless” is not the correct adjective. Indeed, during the trial, the judge did let the plaintiffs examine 113 random ballots and 42.5% turned out to be flawed in ways that rendered them illegitimate, primarily by being 19-inch ballots printed on 20-inch paper that couldn’t be read by the tabulators, for reasons that still remain a mystery.

The “sanctions” are obviously an intimidation tactic, designed to scare citizens into giving up their First Amendment rights to free speech and to petition the government for redress of grievances when they believe their so-called “leaders” are abusing the system and lying to them.

The Perfect Summation

Lake has vowed to appeal, and I wish her luck. In the meantime, I think the best summation of this verdict that I’ve heard so far came from a Twitter user who put it into one short sentence: “This is like the cops telling you they caught the woman who stole your car, but she gets to keep it and you have to pay for the gas for the next four years.”

Mike Huckabee is the former governor of Arkansas and longtime conservative commentator on issues in culture and current events. A New York Times best-selling author, he hosts the weekly talk show Huckabee on TBN.

Originally published at MikeHuckabee.com. Reprinted with permission.