Mike Lindell promises new evidence in Lake lawsuit. 'The most explosive evidence ever!'

Coming Thursday to a U.S. Supreme Court near you: “Explosive” new evidence in Kari Lake’s bid to outlaw Arizona’s vote counting machines.

No, really.

"This is big, everybody,” MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell announced Saturday, on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast. “This is what we've been waiting for.”More likely, this is what he’s hoping will sell a few pillows to pay for all those defamation cases he’s facing from Dominion Voting Systems et al – three at last count -- but I digress.

Far-right politicians and their pals, in a quest for money or a rung up the political food chain, have spent the last three-plus years inventing yarns about the many devious ways in which the 2020 election was stolen in Arizona. Many of them involved Dominion’s tabulation machines, which count the vote in Maricopa County.

Remember the “Kraken” lawsuit, filed by then-state GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward – the one claiming “at least” 412,494 Arizona ballots were phony, part of a Venezuelan-style plot to secretly switch thousands of votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden?

It was laughed out of the court by a federal judge who noted that “gossip and innuendo” does not constitute evidence.

Remember Maricopa County’s independent audit?

The Republican-run county Board of Supervisors hired two sets of elections experts who concluded the tabulation equipment wasn’t even connected to the internet, much less hacked to steal the election.

Remember the three IT experts who examined the county’s routers and Splunk logs, under the watchful eye of a special master (former GOP Rep. John Shadegg) agreed to by the Arizona Senate and Maricopa County?

All three experts separately concluded that that tabulation equipment wasn’t hacked to steal the election.

Remember the Senate’s own audit?

Nope, no hacking found there either. In fact, a hand count of the county’s 2.1 million paper ballots matched the machine count, showing Biden the winner.

So naturally Lake and Finchem, then candidates for governor and secretary of state, sued the state of Arizona and Maricopa County in April 2022, asking a judge to bar use of the machines tabulation of votes in the 2022 election and instead require that paper ballots be used.

In their lawsuit, which was underwritten by Lindell, they claimed that even if the machines weren't hacked, they could be hacked and there's no way to verify the machine count unless we start voting with paper ballots.

Never mind that Arizona already uses paper ballots and in fact requires a hand count of a random sample of those ballots, to verify the machine count.

U.S. District Court John J. Tuchi threw out their lawsuit in August 2022, noting that the pair provided no evidence that machine counting produces inaccurate results and no proof that a hand count of ballots would be more accurate.

Then he slapped the Lake/Finchem lawyers with sanctions for their “frivolous” waste of court time and taxpayer money.

Then he socked the attorneys -- Kurt Olsen, Andrew Parker and Alan Dershowitz -- with the county’s $122,000 legal bill.

Then the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals unanimously sent Lake and Finchem packing, not buying their warning that vote counting machines are the handmaiden of the devil.

“Their operative complaint relies on a ‘long chain of hypothetical contingencies’ that have never occurred in Arizona,” the three-judge panel ruled in October.

In other words, a conspiracy must be more than a figment of your imagination — or a calculated political strategy — if you want the courts to take you seriously.

You’d think that would be that, given the wholesale shellacking of Lake and Finchem. But, of course, that is never that when it comes to election conspiracy theories and yet another chance to rally the base and shake lose some pocket change.

And Lake and Finchem are now running for the U.S. Senate and the state Senate.

Ron Filipkowski, who runs the MeidasTouch Network blog, reports that Lindell breathlessly announced over the weekend that he has uncovered new evidence and this week will be asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case.

"This is big everybody! This is what we've been waiting for. It's a Petition for Writ of Certiorari …

“This isn't just some tinfoil hat case, this is huge …

“This new evidence is the most explosive evidence ever!...

“Just in the last two months we got this. The lawyers are excited, the whole world is gonna watch us. .... It's going to be the biggest thing ever, and we are going to save this country!"

The biggest thing ever.

Ex-Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, a major funder of the Senate 2020 audit, also is promoting the supposed big reveal, saying on social media, "The Enigma surrendered her secrets" and "This moment could redefine history."

Kari Lake, the Senate candidate who recently said she’s moving on from the 2022 election, is also touting this supposedly explosive new evidence.

“More to come,” she teased over the weekend on social media.Why do I get the feeling this explosion will be a like a pile of pillows blowing up in Lindell’s and Lake’s faces.

Foam fluff everywhere.

America is saved.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on X, formerlyTwitter, at @LaurieRoberts or on Threads at laurierobertsaz.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Mike Lindell promises new evidence in Lake lawsuit. 'The most explosive evidence ever!'