Kari Lake Scandals That Flushed Her Credibility Down The Drain

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When Donald Trump lost the election in 2020, he had people around him who denied that such a thing had happened, like former lawyer Rudy Giuliani and the MyPillow guy Mike Lindell. They were joined by Kari Lake, a former newscaster turned Republican political figure from Arizona. But it's not just that Lake has supported the idea that Trump had the election stolen from him, even when all evidence points to him losing fair and square, that has made people question how much she can be trusted. There have been a number of other times where Lake has engaged in shady behavior that has undermined her integrity and reliability.

Lake ran for governor of Arizona in 2022, and she lost. Did she accept the defeat with grace? She did not. Instead, she started making claims that the election had been stolen. And in her book "Unafraid: Just Getting Started," she wrote: "I am the lawful governor of Arizona. The current occupant of the governor's office is just a squatter." But despite her claims, even some people who believed that the 2020 election had been stolen from Trump didn't think it had been stolen from Lake.

Lake went to court multiple times over her loss of the governor's seat, but the results remained unchanged. One Arizona Republican told NBC News in 2024, "At this point, it makes her lose credibility to keep on spending time, money, and energy on it. It's not going to change at this point. And if she were to recognize that, then she would probably gain a lot more support."

Kari Lake went on to run for the Arizona Senate seat in 2024. She lost that election too, and she wasn't able to gracefully concede defeat that time either. When asked whether she'd lost in a deposition, Lake appeared unable to directly say that she did; instead, she said that her opponent had been certified for the position, per KJZZ.

Lake hasn't done much to boost her credibility after those losses. Lake is currently a senior adviser for the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which "is an independent federal agency overseeing public service media networks that provide unbiased news and information in countries where the press is restricted." In part, it oversees the international broadcast "Voice of America." For a time, Lake was calling herself the "acting CEO," via X (formerly known as Twitter. In that role, she fired hundreds of people at Voice of America. However, in March 2026, a judge ruled that Lake was not legally the CEO, and therefore, the firings she tried to enact were not legal. It's similar to what happened to Lindsey Halligan, who had a swift career downfall when she was deemed to be operating illegally as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Even before a judge ruled that Lake's work at the agency was invalid, there were those who didn't feel she was right for the job, given her history of election denials. Democratic Representative Greg Stanton from Arizona laid out all the times he felt that Lake couldn't admit the truth at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing in June 2025. He said, "The American people cannot believe a word you say."