Arizona Federal Judge Slays The ‘Kraken’ Election Lawsuit

U.S. District Court Judge Diane Humetewa late Wednesday tossed the last of the legal challenges to the decision by Arizona voters to choose Joe Biden for president by slaying the “Kraken” lawsuit.

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Howard Fischer reports, Last lawsuit to invalidate election ends in loss for GOP:

In a sometimes strongly worded decision, U.S. District Court Judge Diane Humetewa said the claims brought by attorneys for the 11 would-be Republican electors who would vote for President Trump are based on theories that Secretary of State Katie Hobbs conspired with various foreign and domestic individuals and companies to manipulate the results and allow Biden to win.

“The allegations they put forth to support their claims of fraud fail in their particularity and plausibility,” the judge wrote.

“Plaintiffs append over 300 pages of attachments, which are only impressive for their volume,” Humetewa said. “The various affidavits and expert reports are largely based on anonymous witnesses, hearsay, and irrelevant analysis of unrelated elections.”

But the judge said that isn’t the only reason she threw out the case without giving the challengers a chance to present their evidence.

She said federal courts are allowed to handle only those cases where the challengers have actual standing. That, said Humetewa, requires them to show an actual injury, that the injury is fairly traceable to the conduct they are challenging, and that their injury could be addressed by a favorable court ruling.

Only thing is, she said, the electors cannot meet their burden.

They are not candidates for office whose election could be changed with a ruling. Instead, Humetewa said, electors under Arizona law have a purely “ministerial function” to cast their ballots for the presidential candidate who got the most votes.

“Notably, the Republican candidate whose name was on the ballot is not a plaintiff in this case,” she said.

Humetewa looked no more kindly on the claim that alleged breaches of Arizona election laws permitted illegal votes, allowing voter fraud which effectively diluted the lawful votes that were cast.

“Absent from the complaint is an allegation that plaintiffs (or any registered Arizona voters for that matter) were deprived of their right to vote,” the judge said

“Instead, they bring baseless claims of disparate treatment of Arizona voters, in subjecting one class of voters to greater burdens or scrutiny than another,” she continued. “They do not allege what ‘class’ of voters were treated disparately.”

And there’s something else.

“To give plaintiffs the relief they desire would disenfranchise the nearly 3.4 million Arizonans that voted in the 2020 General Election,” Humetewa said. “Under plaintiffs theory of dilution, this would transform all of the alleged diluted votes from being ‘diluted’ to being destroyed.”

The judge also said that, with narrow exceptions, the U.S. Constitution prohibits individuals from suing the state or the officials named — Hobbs and Gov. Doug Ducey — in federal court.

“None of these exceptions are present here,” she wrote.

Humetewa also said the lawsuit, filed earlier this month, comes too late.

The challengers argued that some of the fraud — particularly related to claims that Dominion voting machines and software were rigged to produce more votes for Biden — were not known until election night. That’s when their experts said they noticed a “blip” in data that showed a dump of votes for Biden.

But the judge said there’s nothing new here. She said the challengers themselves admitted they were aware of suspected irregularities with Dominon voting machines as early as 2018.

Humetewa said there are reasons that courts require claims to be brought promptly. That, she said is prejudice to those being sued.

“The prejudice to the defendants and the nearly 3.4 million Arizonans who voted in the 2020 General Election would be extreme, and entirely unprecedented, if plaintiff were allowed to have their claims heard at this late date,” she said.

Finally, the judge said, the lawsuit sought to block Ducey from transmitting the certified results to federal officials, force Ducey and Hobbs to decertify the election, declare that there was ballot fraud, require a manual recount of early votes and allow the challengers to seize and inspect voting hardware and software as well as security camera recordings.

“Obviously, the court cannot enjoin the transmission of the certified results because they already have been transmitted,” Humetewa said. And she said nothing in federal law even authorizes her to order such an action.

An appeal is likely given that plaintiffs in similar cases in other states have sought review.

The decision comes as state GOP Chair Kelli Ward weighs trying to get the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a decision of the Arizona Supreme Court upholding the election returns.

The Arizona Mirror adds, Judge skewers GOP lawsuit to throw out AZ election, citing total lack of evidence:

Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who, along with Gov. Doug Ducey, was one of the two named defendants in the lawsuit, hailed the dismissal of the seventh and final challenge to Arizona’s election results as a “turning point in our democratic process.”

“No credible evidence has been presented. Courts have tossed out every claim. There will be another chance at the ballot in four years — that’s how it works. Leaders must step up and say this is unacceptable and un-American. Enough is enough,” Hobbs said in a press statement.

But Hobbs also expressed concern about what she said was the damage done by such lawsuits.

“My sincerest concern about each of these legal actions was never that they would invalidate the results, but were instead intended to create discord and dissolution, further exploiting divisions in our communities,” she said.

The lawsuit was brought by both local attorneys and out-of-state attorney Sidney Powell — a one-time attorney for the Trump campaign — who has spread myriad baseless allegations since the election claiming that Trump was cheated out of the election through fraud. Powell had vowed that she would “release the kraken” by providing proof of her many claims, leading both supporters and detractors to use the term for the lawsuits she brought in numerous states, including Arizona.

However, Powell’s “kraken” lawsuits have fallen short in every state where she’s brought them, including Arizona. Powell did not personally participate in a Tuesday hearing in Humetewa’s courtroom, though Haller, an attorney from her Dallas-based law firm, argued on behalf of the plaintiffs that the case shouldn’t be dismissed.

Alexander Kolodin, an Arizona attorney who represented the plaintiffs, said the legal team is reviewing its options for appeal, including whether to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. He said he would have more information by Thursday.

Following the Arizona decision, a federal judge in Wisconsin dismissed the last of the “Kraken” lawsuits in that state as well. From the decision:

Federal judges do not appoint the president in this country. One wonders why the plaintiffs came to federal court and asked a federal judge to do so. After a week of sometimes odd and often harried litigation, the court is no closer to answering the “why.” But this federal court has no authority or jurisdiction to grant the relief the remaining plaintiff seeks. The court will dismiss the case.

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