Kari Lake’s Executive Director Wins $25K Ruling Over Maricopa County Recorder

Kari Lake’s Executive Director Wins $25K Ruling Over Maricopa County Recorder

by | Aug 13, 2024 | News

By Matthew Holloway |

Merissa Hamilton, the Executive Director of Kari Lake’s organization Save Arizona Fund and Co-founder and CEO of Strong Communities Action, notched a victory against Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer in his ongoing defamation lawsuit against Lake.

The lawsuit overall is continuing to move forward with Richer stating through his complaint that he has faced “violent vitriol and other dire consequences,” due to what he calls lies spread by Lake, according to the Associated Press. In an op-ed he wrote for the Arizona Republic, Richer said, “Rather than accept political defeat, rather than get a new job, she has sought to undermine confidence in our elections and has mobilized millions of her followers against me.”

In the course of this case, Richer’s attorneys subpoenaed Hamilton, who is not a party to the lawsuit, and compelled her compliance to provide documents for the case. According to court documentation, “Hamilton informed Plaintiff’s counsel she had copied over 100,000 documents. As was her right under A.R.S. § 12-351, Hamilton insisted on payment of reasonable costs at the time of production.” Hamilton assessed her costs to be $32,345.50.

Per A.R.S. § 12-351, ‘All reasonable costs incurred in a civil action by a witness who is not a party to the action with respect to the production of documents pursuant to a subpoena for the production of documentary evidence shall be charged against the party requesting the subpoena if the witness submits an itemized statement to the requesting party stating the reproduction and clerical costs incurred by the witness.” It also allows a witness to “demand payment of the reasonable costs simultaneously with actual delivery of the subpoenaed documents.”

Rachel Alexander of the Arizona Sun Times reported via X, “MaRICOpa(sic) County Recorder Stephen Richer just got smacked down by a left wing judge; ordered to pay Merissa Hamilton $25,345.50! And it appears she was representing herself without an attorney and still won. This was regarding him trying to drag her into his defamation lawsuit against Kari Lake.”

Hamilton corrected her noting that the judge had been changed over the summer and that the presiding judge is now “the Honorable Randall Warner[.] He’s known as being a traditional Constitutionalist judge.”

Judge Warner ruled in Hamilton’s favor that Richer must pay Hamilton $25,345.50 upon picking up the documents even if he elects not to take them, ruling that “Hamilton is not entitled to $7,000 for clerical costs both because those costs are not itemized as required by A.R.S. § 12-351(A), and because 280 hours—the equivalent of seven people working full-time for a week—is an unreasonable amount of time to spend on producing documents.”

Richer’s legal team argued that “Hamilton’s costs are unreasonable because they result from her unilateral decision to produce paper documents. Plaintiff points out that the subpoena and Rule 45 direct documents to be produced in native form and as they are kept in the usual course of business.” However, Hamilton noted that the cover letter she received with the subpoena stated, “Plaintiff was seeking ‘copies of all documents requested,’ that she could comply with it by ‘mailing or delivering the requested documents,’ and that she would be reimbursed for ‘reasonable copying expenses.’” She also pointed out that the letter failed to mention electronic production as an option and that her decision to produce the documents on paper was reasonable.

Judge Warner did concede that “Hamilton misread Plaintiff’s instructions, which any lawyer familiar with the discovery rules would understand as a request for documents in native form. This means digital documents must be produced in their original digital form. Documents stored as PDF’s must be produced as PDF’s. Word documents must be produced as Word documents. Excel files must be produced as Excel files.” However, he added “But it is easy to see how a non-lawyer endeavoring to comply with Plaintiff’s subpoena could be confused.”

In law, many attorneys believe you should never ask a question you don’t know the answer to. It seems clear that Richer didn’t know Hamilton would answer on paper.

Matthew Holloway is a senior reporter for AZ Free News. Follow him on X for his latest stories, or email tips to Matthew@azfreenews.com.

Maricopa County Recorder Richer Rejected By Majority Of Republican Primary Voters

Maricopa County Recorder Richer Rejected By Majority Of Republican Primary Voters

by | Aug 2, 2024 | News

By Staff Reporter |

Maricopa County’s Republican voters declined to reelect Stephen Richer for recorder, instead electing his opponent, State Representative Justin Heap. 

Richer lost despite having a well-funded and diverse network of bipartisan support, as well as a unique platform with the media after Heap was mistakenly denied the chance to participate in a televised debate. 

In an X post, Richer said that he accepted the results and would “move on.” Richer pledged to carry out his duties in his remaining months in office, while making claims about the successes of his administration: improved voter rolls and flawless mail voting. 

“[O]ne of my friends said the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office is basically like teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts. It’s cursed. So best wishes to my successor!” said Richer. 

In his victory statement doubled as a campaign donation pull, Heap said that he would “end the laughingstock elections” of Maricopa County perpetuated under Richer.

Richer himself was also bipartisan with his voting choices. Earlier this summer, the recorder announced he would vote to reelect Democratic President Joe Biden rather than former President Donald Trump.

In the months leading up to that announcement, Richer hinted at his apparent party ambivalency. 

Last year, Richer dismissed the importance of certain social issues that make up a major portion of the GOP platform: transgender activism, woke corporations, and critical race theory, among them. 

The recorder’s ousting marks a close to a controversial and heated tenure kicked off by the 2020 election and similar contentions renewed in the 2022 election. 

To Richer, contentions with the 2020 election were largely unfounded. Richer strongly opposed the election audit.

The 2022 election, the first under Richer’s watch, experienced significant failures of election machines leading up to and on election day. The issues prompted an investigation by then-outgoing Attorney General Mark Brnovich. 

Richer used the attention from the election machine failures to fundraise for his reelection campaign. 

Richer also doubled the number of vote centers, a point of contention for GOP voters due to beliefs that vote centers allow for easier ballot harvesting.

In 2022, Richer worked with the Biden administration on plans for speech moderation. Richer suggested that the government hold “bootcamps” for media outlets to improve election reporting. 

Later that year, Richer deleted a tweet celebrating his prevention of a certain media outlet from having access to the county as part of a newly created press pass system. A federal court later ruled that Richer’s press pass denial was violative of the First Amendment. Richer later deleted his celebratory tweet.

Shortly after rolling out the press pass restrictions, the county launched a disinformation center. 

Richer has also defended the much-maligned mail-in ballots as less problematic than in-person voting, as well as unmanned drop boxes.

Earlier this year, we reported on Richer tasking staff with compiling articles and online content pertaining to his personal defamation lawsuit against Kari Lake for her claims of the 2022 election, which marked her defeat against now-Governor Katie Hobbs.

Richer was also involved with the Republican Accountability Project, a Democratic dark money group that spent millions to ensure the defeat of 2022 gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.

AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.

FACT CHECK: Maricopa County Recorder Didn’t Defend Arizona From Extreme Left Election Policy

FACT CHECK: Maricopa County Recorder Didn’t Defend Arizona From Extreme Left Election Policy

by | Jul 30, 2024 | Opinion

By Merissa Hamilton |

The famous poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson from the 1800s once quipped, “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you are saying.” This is especially true when observing how our elected officials operate our government.

Per several posts on X, voters recently received a text blast referencing Vice President Kamala Harris as the “presumptive Democrat nominee” and chiding her “radical” left election policy positions, including “same-day voter registration, no voter ID, and more federal control of our elections.” The text blast made a policy commitment on behalf of the current Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer to protect us from these extreme policies.

But when presented with the opportunity to codify such protections into law, the Maricopa County Recorder’s track record tells a different story.

In the 2022 legislative session, State Representative Jake Hoffman introduced bill HB2237, which would have made same-day voter registration illegal in Arizona.

It was a very simple bill that just stated:

Same-day voter registration is a scheme from the left to overwhelm County Recorders with thousands of registrations on Election Day or during a voting period. This makes it nearly impossible to confirm if someone is actually a legal citizen resident of Arizona before providing them with a ballot.

Currently, throughout the year, but especially at the last minute right before voter registration election deadlines, many groups in Arizona, especially from the left, have generous paid programs to register voters. They often don’t submit completed forms, creating complications for election workers. Jen Fifield from Vote Beat recently reported on the issues caused by this.

As the article mentions, these same extreme left groups advocate for same-day voter registration, and many pushed their members and lobbyists to sign in against HB2237 in 2022. Even Katie Hobbs’ Secretary of State Office signed in against the bill, while conservative groups like the Arizona Free Enterprise Club and Heritage Action signed in favor of banning same-day voter registration.

You would think that at such a moment as this bold, simple bill, the Maricopa County Recorder could take a strong stand and defend his employees and the voters from such an insane policy from the left. Unfortunately, neither the Recorder’s Office, his office’s lobbyist, nor the associations for the recorders and counties took a position on the bill. The Maricopa County Recorder didn’t show up to testify for or against the bill either.

Complete silence.

When it comes to voter ID, it gets much worse.

The Arizona Legislature added Proposition 309 to the 2022 ballot, which would have added a voter ID requirement on early ballots. It was a simple proposal that the Recorder’s Office was previously on record as supporting in principle, per public records.

When the bill was brought before the Legislature, the Arizona Association of Counties opposed it. There is no record of the Recorder or his lobbyist associations taking a position on the bill or offering amendments.

When the proposition made it to the ballot, the Maricopa County Recorder not only publicly opposed voter ID for early voting but also used government resources to do so.

I found this strange since all my previous interactions with Recorder Richer, from working on his 2019 “election integrity” report to conversations with his office on policy to a coffee meeting I had with him one-on-one in 2021, all indicated that his position was that signature verification alone wasn’t sufficient to secure elections and that some sort of voter ID mechanism was needed to secure early ballots.

The Arizonans for Voter ID organization sent a letter to the Arizona Attorney General admonishing Recorder Richer for violating the law by using his government office resources to advocate against the ballot referral.

The voter ID proposition ended up failing by 18,488 votes and only by 2.5% in Maricopa County.

Fast forward two years. The Maricopa County Recorder’s letter on Prop 309 is scrubbed from the internet now that he’s running for re-election, and text blasts are going out stating he will defend voter ID.

To be clear, the current Maricopa County Recorder not only has multiple associations at his disposal to advocate for or against policy, but he also has his own lobbyist for his office. With all these lobbying resources, his opponent Rep. Justin Heap was recently featured on the Mike Broomhead show as stating that although he’s served on the Legislature’s House Elections Committee for the last two years, he’s never seen the Maricopa County Recorder at the Legislature. Heap says Recorder Richer has been a “hindrance” in passing needed laws, such as those to fight radical left policies.

When it comes to federal laws, as I mentioned in my piece on AZ Free News last week, the current Recorder has also been silent on his award-winning X platform in advocating for the Speaker Johnson-supported SAVE Act to require proof of citizenship for voters in federal elections.

One thing is for certain, while the current Maricopa County Recorder has taken a back seat when it comes to defending voters from radical left policies, Maricopa County voters are certainly desperate for our county recorders to use their resources to give us a stronger voice in standing up for policies that would strengthen the security and trust in our elections.

Merissa Hamilton is the founder and chairwoman of the nonpartisan nonprofit organizations Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona and Strong Communities Action, also known as EZAZ.org, which are focused on making civic education and action as easy as pie. She’s an elected Member at Large of Congressional District 1 for the Arizona Republican Party and previously ran for Mayor in 2020. Merissa is also the Director of Integration and Policy at The R.O.A.R. PAC, which is on a mission to restore our American Republic.

Maricopa County Recorder Rebuffs Legal Request To Clean Foreign Citizens Off Voter Rolls

Maricopa County Recorder Rebuffs Legal Request To Clean Foreign Citizens Off Voter Rolls

by | Jul 26, 2024 | Opinion

By Merissa Hamilton |

This week, the Maricopa County Attorney’s office, on behalf of their client, the Maricopa County Recorder, rebuffed all of the concerns about cleaning foreign citizens from voter rolls that America First Legal (AFL) raised in a letter sent on behalf of its clients Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona and Arizona Free Enterprise Club.

This should be especially alarming since the number of voters who haven’t provided proof of citizenship and cannot be confirmed as citizens has increased by over 32% since last October in Maricopa County. Arizona law requires that voter registrants must provide documentary proof of citizenship. However, these federal-only voters are allowed to register to vote in federal races because a Supreme Court decision from 2013 held that federal law does not allow states to ask for documentary proof of citizenship in federal races such as for Congress and the U.S. Senate. And that may even extend for presidential electors (the issue being litigated right now). For federal races, voters only need to attest to being a citizen by checking a box on the federal voter registration form and signing the form. Only a little over 10,000 votes determined the outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election in Arizona, yet over 26,000 federal-only voters are currently registered to vote in Maricopa County.

Stephen Richer with graph

The AFL letter went to all 15 Arizona County Recorders as a reminder of their obligation “to remove foreign citizens” from their voter rolls. It outlines additional tools the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has available, as codified by Congress under 8 U.S.C. § 1373 and 8 U.S.C. § 1644, to assist county recorders in their legal obligations to ensure only U.S. citizens are registered to vote.

According to the letter, Arizona law requires recorders “to consult ‘relevant federal databases to which the county recorder has access to confirm information obtained that requires cancellation of registrations,’” per A.R.S. § 16-165(K).

While it’s a state and federal crime for foreign nationals to register to vote, just making something illegal doesn’t prevent bad actors from breaking the law like other crimes. In fact, under the Trump administration, ICE indicted 19 foreign nationals for voting in the 2016 election illegally.

Since Arizona is a border state, why wouldn’t county recorders in Arizona want to make sure they are utilizing every possible tool to prevent foreign nationals from accessing a ballot in our election? And what more can they do to protect our voting rights and ensure citizens’ votes aren’t effectively neutralized by a foreign national illegally casting a ballot?

AFL brilliantly provides a path by using federal statutes, 8 U.S.C. § 1373 and 8 U.S.C. § 1644, that require DHS to provide the information. It isn’t hard for DHS to get this information through its Person Centric Query System (PCQS) database. As the letter explains:

“[The PCQS database] allows agency employees to look up individuals and quickly and easily verify their citizenship status using only a name and date of birth. This means that, right now, DHS can answer all of your inquiries about the citizenship status of all presently registered voters and all persons attempting to register to vote and do so at no cost. You already have the authority to submit citizenship inquiries about registered voters to DHS, and you can demand immediate responses from DHS.”

There is no additional cost to the taxpayers, and we can protect the voters! Where is the “Sign My County Recorder Up” button for doing his or her job?

There’s another level of required scrutiny that’s also not happening in Arizona, and that’s where the Attorney General comes into play. AFL states that per state law, county recorders are “required to send ‘to the attorney general a list of all individuals who are registered to vote and who have not provided satisfactory evidence of citizenship’” so that the Attorney General may fulfill her obligation “to use all available resources to verify the citizenship status of the applicant[s].’”

Don’t hold your breath that this will happen under the current Maricopa County Recorder regime anytime soon! Stephen Richer’s attorneys replied to AFL’s letter, refusing to take any action.

When asked, he usually shrugs off the concern about foreign nationals on the voter rolls, arguing that federal-only voters are concentrated on college campuses, as if that somehow makes it OK. He’s even gotten to the point of challenging Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk for questioning any voter in Arizona not needing to provide proof of citizenship to vote:

He also says federal-only voters have lower turnout than average voters, so there is nothing to worry about….

Except the public doesn’t know how many federal-only voters cast ballots, as the number is not reported in the official statewide canvass by the Arizona Secretary of State.

While the current Maricopa County Recorder has published in his campaign communications that he thinks documented proof of citizenship should be required to vote in federal elections, adding that it’s not “an undue burden,” he stated that it’s the job of Congress to change the law.

This is true. That would certainly help!

In the same campaign email, he stated that he supports Speaker Johnson’s proposal, the SAVE Act, which would require documented proof of citizenship to register to vote for federal elections. Still, he’s never come out on his award-winning X account to support the SAVE Act or Speaker Mike Johnson’s bold support of this game-changing legislation to secure our elections.

Here’s my friendly reminder that this is the same Recorder who was accused of using public resources to advocate against additional security measures for voting by mail. So, he’s certainly not averse to going out of bounds when fighting for or against a policy he favors.

Former President Theodore Roosevelt once said, “I have always had a horror of words that are not translated into deeds, of speech that does not result in action.”

The Maricopa County Recorder’s latest rebuff of AFL’s letter to take steps that clearly aren’t an undue burden on his office to keep the voter rolls clean, his lack of transparency on the issue of federal-only voters’ voting habits, his constant diminishing of concerns from the public, and his lack of public support for the SAVE Act certainly screams the loudest when it comes to where he truly stands on the issue.

If only there were someone who could provide a Diet Coke explainer video to show the current Recorder why Maricopa County citizens deserve election administration in which every possible effort is made to prohibit foreign nationals from accessing a ballot to cast a vote in our elections, maybe we would have a better chance at that “Sign My County Recorder Up” button functioning in Maricopa County.

Stephen Richer with cans of Diet Coke
Photo from the Maricopa County Recorder video published on X here.

Merissa Hamilton is the founder and chairwoman of the nonpartisan nonprofit organizations Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona and Strong Communities Action, also known as EZAZ.org, which are focused on making civic education and action as easy as pie. She’s an elected Member at Large of Congressional District 1 for the Arizona Republican Party and previously ran for Mayor in 2020. Merissa is also the Director of Integration and Policy at The R.O.A.R. PAC, which is on the mission of restoring our American Republic.

Kari Lake’s Executive Director Wins $25K Ruling Over Maricopa County Recorder

Leftist Billionaire Bankrolling Maricopa County Recorder’s Reelection Campaign

by | Jul 12, 2024 | News

By Staff Reporter |

A leftist billionaire has a vested interest in the reelection of Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer.

Campaign mailers paid for by Women for Justice disclosed that venture capitalist and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman was one of the three top donors in their effort to support Richer, in addition to Sac Holdings and Robert Granieri.

Women for Justice is a leftist nonprofit advocacy group formerly known as Women for Bernie Sanders 2016. 

Hoffman rose up over the last decade as one of the most influential Democratic donors against former President Donald Trump. Since 2015, Hoffman has contributed nearly $64.7 million to left-wing causes per FEC records. This election cycle alone he has contributed over $28 million, though FEC records don’t reflect any direct Arizona contributions. 

This wouldn’t be the first time Hoffman has backed a candidate with an “R” by their name. In 2022, Hoffman contributed $2,000 to former House Speaker Rusty Bowers’ reelection bid.

Prior to that, in 2021 Hoffman contributed $5,300 to then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs’ gubernatorial campaign. 

In an effort to beat Trump in a reelection, Hoffman founded FWD.us, and has served as a financial backer for the Hopewell Fund, an arm of the Arabella Advisors dark money network. 

Hoffman spent $100 million of his own funds to defeat Trump and the GOP in 2020, and created the Investing in Us tech finance company to defeat Republicans. 

In pursuit of his goal to eliminate Trump and allied GOP members, Hoffman’s Investing in Us organization, in an “experimental” initiative led by former Obama administration federal agents, orchestrated a fake news social media campaign in the 2018 Alabama special election to undermine GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore. Although Hoffman apologized when caught, he never published the disinformation policies to prevent similar incidents from occurring as promised. 

In 2021, Hoffman teamed up with dark money megadonor George Soros to back a disinformation-tackling media firm led by Democrat strategist Tara McGowan, Good Information Inc., and the nonprofit she previously ran, ACRONYM.

ACRONYM spent $100 million to defeat Trump; financed Shadow, a company responsible for the delayed reporting of the Iowa caucus results; and launched Courier Newsroom, a network of seven news sites at the time positioned in swing states that prompted a Federal Elections Commission (FEC) complaint for allegedly disguising the true nature as a political committee. One of those news sites, The Copper Courier, exists in Arizona.

More recently, Hoffman funded the E. Jean Carroll defamation lawsuit against Trump for publicly denying her 2019 book claim that he sexually assaulted her in either 1995 or 1996.

This month, Hoffman announced his intent to invest millions into Smartmatic, the voting technology company embattled by claims of rigged vote counting after the 2020 election, in their lawsuit against Fox News. 

Richer admitted in a recent interview that, although he has been a Republican, he plans to vote for Joe Biden in November.

AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.