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kari lake
'Stuff of Parody': Trump Taps Election-Denying Ally Kari Lake to Run Voice of America
"Authoritarians love to control and instrumentalize media organizations, especially state-funded ones," journalist Mehdi Hasan wrote in response to the news.
Dec 12, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump said Wednesday that he has chosen Kari Lake, a far-right election denier and failed U.S. Senate candidate, to lead the federally funded international broadcast network Voice of America, a move that critics said underscores Trump's effort to transform government entities into vehicles to advance his own interests.
In a Truth Social post, Trump wrote that as director of VOA, Lake would "ensure that the American values of Freedom and Liberty are broadcast around the World FAIRLY and ACCURATELY, unlike the lies spread by the Fake News Media."
Lake, a former television news anchor in Arizona who has echoed Trump's insidious attacks on journalists, wrote in response to the president-elect's announcement that she was "honored" to be asked to lead VOA, which she characterized as "a vital international media outlet dedicated to advancing the interests of the United States by engaging directly with people across the globe and promoting democracy and truth." VOA, which is supposed to have editorial independence, has long faced criticism for its coverage and treatment of employees.
Though the VOA's Charter states that the outlet will "present a balanced and comprehensive projection of significant American thought and institutions," Lake made clear that she views the network as a propaganda channel for the United States.
"Under my leadership, the VOA will excel in its mission: chronicling America's achievements worldwide," Lake, an outspoken Trump loyalist, wrote Wednesday.
Hours after Trump's announcement that she's his pick to lead VOA, Lake applauded TIME magazine for naming Trump its "Person of the Year" and gushed that he "should have been the Person of the Year every year for the last decade."
Journalists and watchdogs expressed a mixture of alarm and mockery in response to Trump's attempt to elevate Lake to VOA director.
"Kari Lake as (head of) Voice of America is the stuff of parody. Or tragedy," Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, wrote on social media. "VOA matters."
Zeteo's Mehdi Hasan added that "authoritarians love to control and instrumentalize media organizations, especially state-funded ones."
"Good luck to the VOA," he wrote.
VOA is the largest federally funded international broadcaster and is overseen by the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
It is not clear whether Trump will be able to easily install Lake as VOA director. The Washington Post noted that "under rules passed in 2020, the VOA director is appointed by a majority vote of a seven-member advisory board."
"Six members of the board are named by the president and require Senate consent, and the seventh member is the secretary of state," the Post explained.
During his first term in the White House, Trump's pick to lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media worked aggressively to influence VOA coverage.
"In 2020, Mr. Trump appointed Michael Pack, an ally of his former aide Stephen K. Bannon, to run the U.S. Agency for Global Media," The New York Times summarized on Thursday. "Mr. Pack was accused of trying to turn Voice of America into a mouthpiece for the Trump administration, and a federal judge ruled that Mr. Pack had violated the First Amendment rights of the outlet's journalists. A federal investigation later found that Mr. Pack had grossly mismanaged the U.S. Agency for Global Media, repeatedly abusing his power by sidelining executives he felt did not sufficiently support Mr. Trump."
The far-right Project 2025 agenda, which some members of the incoming Trump administration helped craft, includes a section that proposes placing the U.S. Agency for Global Media "under the supervision of the [White House National Security Council], the State Department, or both."
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Returning to Draconian Abortion Bans Doesn’t Make America Great
Old laws like an 1864 Arizona statute are being dusted off in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s June, 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade’s federal guarantee of the right to abortion.
Apr 13, 2024
“When exactly was America great?” is a common question often asked of Donald Trump loyalists sporting MAGA (Make America Great Again) hats. The Republican-dominated Arizona Supreme Court has an answer: 1864. Put aside that the nation was embroiled in a civil war, millions of people were brutally enslaved, native populations were being driven from their lands, and that women were more than a half century from having the right to vote. What apparently made America great in 1864 were extremist anti-abortion laws then in existence.
These old laws are being dusted off in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s June, 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade’s federal guarantee of the right to abortion.
This week, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that an 1864 Arizona abortion ban, including in cases of rape or incest, still stands (with an exception to save the life of the pregnant person). The court stayed its enforcement for two weeks pending final appeals. If those fail, abortions will be criminalized in Arizona, with anyone performing one or even assisting someone in obtaining one facing up to five years in prison.
1864 was a pivotal year in U.S. history, as the tide shifted in the Civil War, leading to Union victory and the abolition of slavery the following year. Yes, the nation made faltering progress then, but it was by no means “great.”
First, some history: Arizona was a territory, not a state, in 1864, and was briefly contested during the Civil War. Confederates wanted it for its vast mineral wealth and for potential access to the Pacific Ocean. Union leaders sent in troops, winning decisive military control in 1862. President Abraham Lincoln appointed William Howell, a Michigan judge, to write Arizona’s laws, specifically including the banning of slavery (with the notorious exception, also included in the Constitution’s 13th Amendment, that prisoners can be subjected to forced labor) and the protection of fugitive slaves from capture and return to the South. Howell also included in the 461-page document, for reasons that are not entirely clear, a short section banning abortion.
While our society has progressed dramatically in the intervening 160 years, four Arizona Supreme Court justices, all appointed by the state’s previous Republican governor, Doug Ducey, ruled that the law is just fine as is.
In 2022, Arizona passed a 15-week abortion ban. That wasn’t extreme enough for some anti-abortion activists, who sought a court order reinstating the 1864 ban.
Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, said after this week’s ruling, “I promise I will do everything in my power to protect our reproductive freedoms.”
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, also a Democrat, said, “No woman or doctor will be prosecuted under this draconian law.”
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito included the 1864 Arizona ban in a list of other state and territorial laws in his controversial Dobbs decision that overturned Roe. Several historians have pointed out that Alito’s list of laws dating from as far back as 1825 fails to provide any context and misses the point that medicinal abortion was a common and accepted practice throughout the colonial era and into the 19th century.
More importantly, the historical laws Alito relied on to overturn Roe completely ignore two centuries of progress.
“A majority, overwhelming majority, of the population wants abortion to be legal in all circumstances,” Amy Littlefield, abortion access correspondent at The Nation, said on the Democracy Now! news hour. “After Dobbs, that population is angry. They are motivated. They are voting. They are organizing. And Republicans and Democrats alike understand this.”
The impact of the Arizona abortion ban will be enormous. On a clinical level, thousands seeking abortions will be denied access, unless they have the resources to travel to another state.
Politically, the Arizona law could be Earth shattering. Arizona Abortion Access is a group collecting up to 1 million signatures—several times the number needed—to put an amendment on the Arizona ballot in November, to enshrine the right to an abortion in the state constitution.
Voters will flock to the polls to support this abortion access referendum. Arizona Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake understands this, and criticized the state Supreme Court decision this week, despite lauding the 1864 ban in 2022.
Likewise, former President Donald Trump said in a video statement that abortion laws should be left to the states, but then, two days later, said the Arizona Supreme Court went too far.
Arizona is a swing state, and Trump knows abortion has been a winning issue for Democrats since Roe was overturned. An abortion rights referendum will also be on the ballot in Florida, where a six-week ban is about to go into effect, putting that reliably red state back in play for President Joe Biden.
1864 was a pivotal year in U.S. history, as the tide shifted in the Civil War, leading to Union victory and the abolition of slavery the following year. Yes, the nation made faltering progress then, but it was by no means “great.” For true greatness, we can only look to the future.
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Why Trump Doesn't Get to Say Arizona 'Went Too Far' on Abortion
"In overturning Roe, Trump's Supreme Court directly invited Arizona's total ban," wrote columnist Robert Reich. "It's all Trump's doing."
Apr 10, 2024
One progressive lawmaker complained of "whiplash" Wednesday as presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump attempted to distance himself—and his own stated abortion policy proposals—from the Arizona Supreme Court's reinstatement of a 160-year-old abortion ban.
A day after the high court upheld a ban on abortion care from the moment of conception, with no exceptions for pregnancies that result from rape or incest, the former president agreed with a reporter that the state had gone "too far" and that abortion law in Arizona will "be straightened out."
As U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) noted, on Monday Trump clearly said he believes states should be empowered to determine their own abortion laws, as well as saying he is "proudly the person responsible" for the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022—clearing the way for state abortion bans.
"Now that Arizona turned the law back to 1864, he says it shouldn't be up to the states?" asked McGovern.
As President Joe Biden's reelection campaign pointed out, the Arizona Supreme Court cited Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the decision that overturned Roe, 22 times in its decision to reinstate the 1864 law.
"One person is responsible: Donald Trump," said the Biden campaign.
Bans like Arizona's, said Rahna Epting, executive director of MoveOn, are "the Republican plan."
"This is Donald Trump's plan," said Epting. "They can't run from it. They can't hide from it. And they can't lie to voters about it."
Trump—who lied at least 30,573 times while in office—claimed on Wednesday that he would not sign a national abortion ban if Congress sent one to his desk.
While Democratic politicians have called out the Republican this week, "mainstream outlets are misleadingly sanitizing the language of Donald Trump, this time by obscuring evidence that he would sign a national abortion ban," Media Matters for America researchers highlighted Tuesday.
Right-wing judges and legislators have moved full steam ahead with pushing for abortion bans and restrictions, even as it has become increasingly clear that forced pregnancy is unpopular with Americans.
Pew Research's latest survey in Arizona found that 49% of adults believe abortion care should be legal in most or all cases, while 46% said it should be illegal.
An AP-NORC poll found last year that 64% of adults believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. The survey was taken after several women in states with so-called "exceptions" to abortion bans suffered physical and mental health harms after being denied abortions despite health complications.
Like Trump, Arizona Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake tried Tuesday to denounce the state Supreme Court ruling, but several critics reminded the public that she spoke in favor of the 1864 law in 2022. Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-Ariz.), whose district Biden won in 2020, quickly posted a statement on social media calling the decision a "disaster for women and providers."
Columnist and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich said the ruling "should make Trump squirm," considering his stated support for each state's right to decide their own abortion policies and his "proud" ownership of the Dobbs ruling.
"In overturning Roe, Trump's Supreme Court directly invited Arizona's total ban," wrote Reich. "It's all Trump's doing. In 2016, during a debate with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Trump pledged to remake the U.S. Supreme Court with nominees who were against abortion... Later in that debate, Trump predicted his nominees would help deliver the end of Roe v. Wade."
"Trump's 'pro-life' justices did end Roe—thereby leaving it up to the states whether to ban abortion," he added. "So Arizona has now resurrected its 1864 law that did just that. Trump can't escape responsibility."
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Arizona Supreme Court Upholds 1864 Abortion Ban—But Voters Will Get 'Ultimate Say' in November
"Arizona is what happens when abortion policy is, as Donald Trump claims he wishes, left up to the states," said one columnist.
Apr 09, 2024
Reproductive justice campaigners in Arizona on Tuesday vowed to make sure voters "have the ultimate say" on abortion rights after the state Supreme Court upheld an 1864 ban that includes no exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.
"This is a horrifying ruling that puts the lives and futures of countless Arizonans at risk," said Leah Greenberg, co-founder of progressive advocacy group Indivisible. "It's devastating and cruel—and we're fighting back."
The court ruled that since Roe v. Wade was overturned by the right-wing majority on the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022, no law exists to prevent Arizona from reinstating a measure passed in 1864—before Arizona was even a U.S. state.
The law outlaws abortion care from the moment of conception with exceptions only in cases of a pregnant person who faces life-threatening health impacts. Such "exceptions" have been shown to threaten the health, including reproductive health and future fertility, of pregnant people in several states since Roe was overturned in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling.
Under the Arizona law, doctors who are prosecuted for providing abortion care could face fines and 2-5 years in prison.
State Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, called the ruling "unconscionable and an affront to freedom."
"Today's decision to reimpose a law from a time when Arizona wasn't a state, the Civil War was raging, and women couldn't even vote will go down in history as a stain on our state," said Mayes. "This is far from the end of the debate on reproductive freedom, and I look forward to the people of Arizona having their say in the matter. And let me be completely clear, as long as I am attorney general, no woman or doctor will be prosecuted under this draconian law in this state."
Democratic organizer Amanda Litman noted that local prosecutors "have jurisdiction to decide whether or not to press charges on people seeking care under this ban."
Last week, organizers with Arizona for Abortion Access announced that they had collected more than the number of signatures needed to support placing a referendum on a constitutional amendment enshrining the right to abortion care on state ballots in November.
The ruling was handed down in Planned Parenthood v. Hazelrigg, a case that centered on an anti-abortion doctor's appeal of a December 2022 ruling which upheld the state's 15-week abortion ban. Dr. Eric Hazelrigg, who owns a chain of anti-abortion clinics in the state, urged the high court to instead reinstate the 1864 ban.
Planned Parenthood Arizona, Inc. said the "deplorable decision will send Arizona back nearly 150 years."
"This ruling will cause long-lasting, detrimental harms for our communities," said the group. "It strips Arizonans of their bodily autonomy and bans abortion in nearly all scenarios. And it does so following the troubling example of the U.S. Supreme Court in Dobbs: with judges ignoring long-settled precedent and principles of law to reach their preferred policy result."
Columnist Helaine Olen noted that the ruling was handed down a day after former President Donald Trump, now the Republican Party's presumptive 2024 presidential nominee, said states should be allowed to impose "whatever they decide" in terms of abortion restrictions and bans.
"Remember," said U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). "This is brought to you by Trump. He supports cruel bans like these, and he made them possible by overturning Roe."
The ruling was put on hold for 14 days, and advocates emphasized on Tuesday that abortion care is still legal in Arizona for the time being.
Since Roe was overturned, pro-forced pregnancy legislators in Wisconsin and Michigan have supported imposing abortion bans dating back to 1849 and 1931, respectively. A judge ruled last July in Wisconsin that the 19th-century law did not make abortion care illegal, and Michigan voters approved a constitutional amendment protection abortion rights, clearing the way for the 1931 law to be repealed.
Voters in Florida, where the state Supreme Court last week effectively approved a six-week abortion ban, will also vote on a constitutional amendment on abortion rights in November.
Since 2022, voters in states including Kansas and Kentucky have voted in favor of expanding, rather than restricting, access to abortion.
"With abortion on the ballot in November, anti-choice extremists will feel the power of pissed off women voters," said Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.). "No doubt about it."
Kari Lake, the Republican Senate candidate in Arizona, quickly attempted to distance herself from the 1864 ban, saying she was calling on the state Legislature to "come up with an immediate commonsense solution that Arizonans can support."
U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), who is running against Lake, noted that just two years ago after Roe was overturned, the former TV newscaster and gubernatorial candidate said she was "incredibly thrilled that we are going to have a great law that's already on the books... It will prohibit abortion in Arizona except to save the life of a mother."
"This November," said Gallego, "Kari Lake will find out, yet again, that Arizonans have no interest in politicians who threaten their rights."
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What's More Frightening Than Kari Lake? A Deepfake Kari Lake
When it comes to elections, it is becoming increasingly clear that the biggest new threat in 2024 comes from the impact of generative AI
Mar 27, 2024
There’s something scary online involving Kari Lake — and it’s not what you might expect.
The nonprofit journalism site Arizona Agenda has a minute-long video from the TV news anchor turned GOP candidate, praising the site’s work . . . and then halfway through, revealing that it is all a deepfake. Watch it here. Especially, watch it on a phone, where the glitches are less noticeable. This is new, and unnerving, and ominous.
It is now less than two years since ChatGPT was released, and the world began to debate how much change advances in generative artificial intelligence would bring. Are they like Gutenberg’s Bible, made possible by the new technology of the printing press? Or are they yet another techno-fad, more hype than impact? Over the coming years, all this will unfold with massive repercussions for our work, healthcare, and lives. (A guarantee: This column is written by a live person, and always will be!)
When it comes to elections, it is becoming increasingly clear that the biggest new threat in 2024 comes from the impact of generative AI on the information ecosystem, including through deepfakes like the one starring “Kari Lake.” (The real Lake, meanwhile, sent a cease-and-desist letter to the website.) That risk is especially high when it comes to audio, which can be easier to manipulate than visual imagery — and harder to detect as fake.
Last year the Slovak presidential election may have been tipped by fake audio of a leading candidate that went viral days before the vote. In New Hampshire, bogus robocalls from “Joe Biden” urged voters to sit out the primary. In Chicago’s mayoral election, a fake tape purported to feature a candidate musing, “In my day, no one would bat an eye” if a police officer killed 17 or 18 people. The risk of doctored audio and video makes it harder to know what is real. Donald Trump has taken to decrying any video that makes him look bad as fake.
At the Brennan Center, we worry especially about how all this might affect the nuts and bolts of election administration. Recently we held a “tabletop exercise” with Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, one of the country’s most effective public servants, and other election officials in the state. It featured a similar fake video starring Fontes, created for educational and training purposes. The verisimilitude was so unnerving that the recording was quickly locked away.
Here’s a scenario we tested out: You’re a local election official. It’s a hectic Election Day and you get a call from the secretary of state. “There’s been a court order,” she says urgently. “You need to shut down an hour early.” When local workers receive a call like that, they should take a breath and call the secretary of state’s office back. You’ll find out quickly that the call was actually a deepfake. That’s the kind of simple process that could catch the fraud before it takes root.
Government can take other steps, too. We’ve laid out many of them in a series of essays with Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. Often, officials need to take steps that would already make sense to protect against cyberthreats and other challenges.
There is more that needs to be done. One good step is to label AI-generated content as watermarked, making clear that AI was used to create or alter an image. Meta (aka Facebook) proudly unveiled such a system to label all content that was created with AI tools from major vendors such as OpenAI, Google, and Adobe. My colleague Larry Norden, working with a software expert, showed how easy it is to remove the watermarks from these images and circumvent Meta’s labeling scheme. It took less than 30 seconds.
So government will need to step up. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D) of Minnesota, a leader on election security, is working with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) of Alaska and others to craft bills requiring campaign ads that make substantial use of generative AI to be labeled. That requires finesse, since courts will be wary of First Amendment issues. But it can be done. Such reform can’t happen fast enough.
After all, as the deepfake Kari Lake put it so well, “By the time the November election rolls around, you’ll hardly be able to tell the difference between reality and artificial intelligence.” That’s . . . intelligent.
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Progressives Cheer Senate Exit of Kyrsten Sinema
Sinema's exit sets up an election between Rep. Ruben Gallego and former television anchor Kari Lake.
Mar 05, 2024
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema—infamous for voting down a federal $15 minimum wage, high-fiving Sen. Joe Manchin to kill filibuster reform, and overall kowtowing to corporate interests while hiding behind euphemistic claims of "moderation"—announced Tuesday she will not run for reelection this year, news welcomed by progressives both in her home state of Arizona and beyond.
Sinema's departure from the 2024 campaign means the Arizona Senate race will most likely be between Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego and Republican former television new anchor and unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.
Sinema claimed in a video announcing her decision not to run that moderate politicians are "not what America wants right now."
"Because I choose civility, understanding, listening, working together to get stuff done, I will leave the Senate at the end of this year," she said.
Rep. Gallego put out a statement thanking Sinema for her "nearly two decades of service," and he invited her to campaign against Kari Lake.
Other progressives took the opportunity to let their disgust be known.
"Sinema will go down in history as a feckless, corrupt egomaniac who sabotaged abortion and voting rights and destroyed her own political career in the process," said Leah Greenberg, co-founder of the advocacy group Indivisible.
"Enjoy your lobbying gig and leave the rest of us alone forever," Greenberg added.
Sinema will have served one term as a senator. She previously served in the House of Representatives for six years and the Arizona Senate for one year. Though Sinema started her career as a member of the Green Party, she later became a Democrat and then switched to being an independent in late 2022—a move that deeply wounded the Biden administration's domestic agenda by slicing the Democratic majority in the Senate to the bone.
Sinema was an obstacle to achieving progressive policy goals in Congress, blocking many key priorities, including eliminating the legislative filibuster, along with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.). She infamously did a thumbs down in the Senate gallery to vote against raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour in 2021.
The group hoping to oust Sinema, the Replace Sinema campaign, put out a statement in response to the news of her not seeking reelection.
"Sinema obstructed President Biden's Build Back Better agenda, got in the way of fundamental rights like abortion care and voting, and did the bidding of her wealthy donors who fund her luxury lifestyle," the group wrote. "We succeeded in first pushing her out of the party—by making clear she couldn't win a Democratic primary—and now we've also helped push her out of the Senate. Good. Arizonans deserve better."
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Following Trump's Lead, Kari Lake Files Suit to Reverse Loss in Arizona Governor's Race
"This isn't how democracy works," said Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Dec 10, 2022
This is a developing story... Please check back for possible updates...
Failed Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake on Friday followed in the footsteps of her political ally former President Donald Trump by challenging her loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs in state court.
Lake's anticipated lawsuit in Maricopa County Superior Court came within the five-day window for such filings after Arizona election officials--including Hobbs, who is currently secretary of state--certified the results on Monday.
Despite losing by more than 17,000 votes, the former news anchor asked the court for either "an order setting aside the certified result... and declaring Kari Lake is the winner," or an injunction requiring the state's largest county to reconduct the gubernatorial election under the direction of a special master.
"This isn't how democracy works," watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) tweeted Saturday.
As The New York Times summarized: "The 70-page filing relies on a hodgepodge of allegations, ranging from voter and poll worker accounts to poll numbers claiming that voters agreed with Ms. Lake on the election's mismanagement. Some of what is cited comes not from last month's election but from the 2020 contest. Other allegations accuse officials of wrongdoing for taking part in efforts to try to tamp down election misinformation."
Lake is a prominent supporter of Trump's "Big Lie" that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. Trump--who is running for president again in 2024, despite his legal trouble--traveled to Arizona to campaign for her.
"If the process was illegitimate then so are the results," Lake tweeted late Friday with a photo of the lawsuit. "Furthermore, if the process was legitimate then so are the results. Let's find out."
The Times--which previously reviewed dozens of accounts from Arizona voters, poll workers, and observers--explained that some of Lake's claims stem from issues that the Maricopa County faced on Election Day:
County officials have said they responded to printer problems at around 30% of the county's voting locations. The printer problem meant that on-site tabulators--the machines that count ballots--rejected some of those ballots. The county had provided a backup system that allowed voters to drop ballots in a secure box to be processed at a different location rather than by the tabulator on site.
But some voters' mistrust of the voting systems led them to not want to use the ballot boxes. Officials say those voters were given other options, including voting elsewhere. The situation created long lines at some of the voting centers, but the county says that every person who wanted to cast a ballot was able to do so.
In response to the suit, Hobbs' campaign manager, Nicole DeMont, said that "Kari Lake needs attention like a fish needs water--and independent experts and local election officials of both parties have made clear that this was a safe, secure, and fair election."
"Arizonans made their voices heard and elected Katie Hobbs as their governor," she added. "No nuisance lawsuit will change that, and we remain laser-focused on getting ready to hit the ground running on Day One of Katie Hobbs administration next year."
The Arizona Republic reported Friday that along with Lake, "Republican secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem and U.S. House candidate Jeff Zink contested their losses saying Arizona's election was not full, fair, or secure--and must be nullified."
"Both men were outside the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, when Trump supporters stormed the building in an effort to prevent Congress from certifying election results," the newspaper noted. "Zink's son, Ryan Zink, was arrested and indicted on several charges in connection with the riot, including trespassing and obstruction. He has pleaded not guilty."
Zink fell over 76,000 votes short of unseating incumbent Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego and Trump-backed Finchem lost to Democrat Adrian Fontes by more than 120,000 votes.
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