WND Unsurprisingly Embraces Kari Lake’s Election Denierism

As failed Arizona governor candidate Kari Lake became the new face of election deniers after the midterm elections, WorldNetDaily — which was already hyping claims of purported election fraud — unsurprisingly bought into her narrative. Bob Unruh uncritically repeated her claims in a Nov. 22 article:

That there are illegal shenanigans in American elections cannot be seriously disputed. And there are allegations that this year’s performance in Arizona surpassed what American voters already have put up with.

Commentator Katie Pavlich at Townhall, for example, pointed out that Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich “is demanding answers from Maricopa County election officials after a number of voters were unable to cast their ballots on election day.”

Pointedly, she noted 25% of the vote tabulation machines in the state’s most populous county were not working on election day, “causing widespread voter disenfranchisement.”

She reported that Brnovich told Maricopa County elections chief Thomas Liddy, “The Elections Integrity Unit (‘Unit’) of the Arizona Attorney General’s Office (‘AGO’) has received hundreds of complaints since Election Day pertaining to issues related to the administration of the 2022 General Election in Maricopa County. These complaints go beyond pure speculation, but include first-hand witness accounts that raise concerns regarding Maricopa’s lawful compliance with Arizona election law. Furthermore, statements made by both Chairman Gates and Recorder Richer, along with information Maricopa County released through official modes of communication appear to confirm potential statutory violations of title 16.”

Now Kari Lake, the Trump-endorsed Republican candidate for governor, who purportedly lost that race by a tiny number of ballots, is promising that she will keep up her fight for election integrity.

In an online statement, she explained the problems included, “Printer problems, tabulation errors, 3-hour lines or longer, and confusing instructions given by election officials made this election day the most chaotic in Arizona’s history.”

She cited the half of voting centers that were “not operational or had significant failures.”

“Would you get on a plane if HALF of the engines didn’t work? Would our friends in the media be able to broadcast their nightly propaganda if HALF of their studio equipment was not working?”

Calling the election “botched and broken beyond repair,” she said her fight is for “our sacred right to vote, a right that many voters were, sadly, deprived of on November 8th.”

As we’ve previously noted, neither those printer issues or the tabulator issues did not prevent anyone from casting their ballots. This was followed by an anonymously written “urgent dispatch” later that day:

There’s clear evidence that Maricopa County has suppressed votes in violation of Arizona law and of the federal Help America Vote Act, and the only solution is to hold another election under the supervision of a court, contends longtime Republican activist and publisher Floyd Brown in a Twitter dispatch from Phoenix.

“The elections in Maricopa have not been certified,” he wrote. “and I have received dozens of calls asking me, ‘Does Kari Lake still have a path to victory?’ I also have been asked, ‘What can I do to help?'”

Answering the questions, Brown, publisher of the Western Journal, said the vote count in Maricopa County in 2022 is “irredeemably flawed.”

“Thousands of voters that showed up to vote were turned away. Other voters were given instructions by officials which contradicted policy, and resulted in ballots being cast, but not counted,” he said.

In fact, Maricopa County election officials said no voter with a valid ID was turned away from the polls. (Also, you might recall that the Brown’s Western Journal began life as the Western Journalism Center, founded by future WND editor Joseph Farah.)

The next original WND story on Lake was a Dec. 12 article by Art Moore pushing more dubious fraud charges:

In her lawsuit contesting the official results of the Nov. 8 election, Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake cites a cyber expert who concludes the extraordinary malfunction of voting machines on Election Day could not have occurred without “intentional misconduct.”

“This didn’t just happen, and we all knew that,” Lake said in an interview Monday with Steve Bannon on “War Room.”

The cyber expert, Clay Parikh, worked for the company that Maricopa County uses to test its voting equipment, Runbeck.

In addition, Lake said, Maricopa County “loosened up every procedure and every safety that we have to make sure that the mail-in ballots were only the [valid ones] were being counted.”

That was followed two days later by a column from Farah begging readers to pray for the success of Lake’s challenges:

The eyes of all Americans are riveted, or should be, on Arizona and the lawsuit filed this week by GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.

The election was a fiasco, the result of intentional misconduct, fraud.

How many illegal votes did it involve? They far exceeded 17,117, according to Lake in the suit.

[…]

Testimony by whistleblowers and witnesses with firsthand knowledge shows that Maricopa County officials violated chain-of-custody laws for hundreds of thousands of mail-in votes.

The Lake suit also claims that Maricopa officials permitted the counting of tens of thousands of mail-in and drop-box ballots that did not satisfy signature verification requirements.

On and on it goes in great detail.

[…]

So, what can you and I do as the lawsuit progresses? Pray!

Moore uncritically rehashed Lake’s claim while touting the upcoming trial over them in a Dec. 20 article:

“Christmas came early yesterday,” declared Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake to an enthusiastically supportive gathering in Phoenix on Tuesday.

She was referring to a judge’s ruling Monday that her legal challenge to Democratic Governor-elect Katie Hobbs election victory will be heard by a jury.

“We are going to trial,” she told the audience at America Fest 2022, hosted by Turning Point USA.

“This is so historic, and you know what, I couldn’t have done it without you,” said Lake.

“Katie Hobbs is going to have to put her hand on the Bible and swear to tell the truth.”

Hobbs, as the current Arizona secretary of state, oversaw the election, which she won by 17,000 votes, according to the certified tally. Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer also will be required to testify.

But neither Moore nor anyone else at WND covered the trial itself or its outcome — probably because she lost. One feature of the trial was that the “cyber expert” whom Lake had previously touted, Clay Parikh, turned testy when pushed to admit facts and also had to disclose that his current meal ticket is MyPillow guy Mike Lindell. WND published only a few paragraphs of a Fox News story on the charges being dismissed.