ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl fact-checked Kari Lake, the Republican gubernatorial nominee in Arizona, on her false claims about the 2020 election.
Lake, a former reporter for Fox’s KSAZ-TV, has repeatedly made voter fraud claims in line with former President Donald Trump and has referred to the 2020 election as stolen and corrupt.
Lake refused to answer CNN’s Dana Bash last week about whether she’d accept an election loss in November. On Sunday, she told Karl that she’d accept the election results if the election was “fair, honest and transparent.”
Lake recently claimed that Arizona’s Maricopa County had accepted 2,000 mail-in ballots after Election Day in 2020. Election officials in the county said that wasn’t true.
In his report, Karl noted that a county investigation had determined that there were only “100 potentially questionable ballots cast out of 2.1 million, hardly enough to change the results.”
Karl also pushed for an answer from Lake on her claim that 740,000 ballots in the county had no chain of custody.
″[You said] those ballots shouldn’t have been counted. Are you really saying you would throw out the ballots of 740,000, that’s nearly three-quarter of a million Arizonans? I mean, those were ballots...” Karl asked before Lake interjected.
“740,000 ballots violated chain of custody requirements in Maricopa County,” Lake replied.
Karl said her claim was not true.
“I mean the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors put out a 98-page report that went through these allegations,” Karl said.
“OK, that is a fact. That is a fact. Check your facts,” Lake said.
Watch the exchange starting around the 3:52 mark in the clip below:
ABC News checked Lake’s “fact” with Maricopa County. Officials refuted her claim with a statement saying the county always had control of the ballots and ballots “were sealed in envelopes and secured in boxes that bipartisan couriers are prohibited from opening.”
Lake is running against Democratic gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs. Hobbs has refused to debate Lake over fears that she was more interested in concocting a spectacle for viewers.
Recent polls show Lake has a slight edge over Hobbs as Election Day approaches in just over two weeks, according to polling aggregation site FiveThirtyEight.