1. Kari Lake Halperin is an American political figure and former television news anchor who has served as the special advisor to the United States Agency for Global Media since 2025 under President Donald Trump.
72 Facts About Kari Lake
1. 2.
Kari Lake was the unsuccessful Republican Party nominee in the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election and the 2024 United States Senate election in Arizona.
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Kari Lake stepped down from her anchor role shortly before announcing her gubernatorial candidacy, winning the Republican nomination with the endorsement of former President Donald Trump.
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Kari Lake's campaign was marked by various controversies, including promoting false claims of Trump winning the 2020 presidential election and calling for the imprisonment of those who accepted Trump's defeat, including her Democratic opponent, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs.
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Kari Lake narrowly lost the election to Hobbs in what was the closest gubernatorial race that year, but refused to concede.
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Kari Lake's lawsuit challenging the results lasted nearly two years and was rejected by Arizona state courts.
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In October 2023, Kari Lake announced her candidacy for the 2024 United States Senate election in Arizona.
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Kari Lake won the Republican nomination in July 2024, but lost the general election to Ruben Gallego.
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In December 2024, then President-elect Trump announced that he wanted Kari Lake to be appointed as the next director of Voice of America, although the position is not legally appointed or nominated by the president.
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Kari Lake was sworn in as a special advisor to the United States Agency for Global Media, which is the agency that oversees the Voice of America, on March 3,2025.
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Kari Lake was born in 1969, in Rock Island, Illinois, to Larry and Sheila Lake, who were natives of the Wisconsin communities of Richland and Appleton.
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Kari Lake graduated from North Scott Senior High School in Eldridge, Iowa, and then received a Bachelor of Arts in communications and journalism from the University of Iowa.
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In May 1991, Kari Lake began working as an intern at KWQC-TV in Davenport, Iowa, while attending the University of Iowa.
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Kari Lake later became production assistant before joining WHBF-TV in Rock Island to be a daily reporter and weekend weathercaster in 1992.
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Kari Lake later became evening anchor at KPNX before relocating to work for WNYT in Albany, New York in the summer of 1998 when she replaced Chris Kapostasy.
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Kari Lake returned to Arizona in 1999 and became an evening anchor for KSAZ-TV.
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In July 2019, Kari Lake was caught on "hot mic" footage promoting her account on the web platform Parler.
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Kari Lake shared COVID-19 misinformation on Twitter and Facebook in April 2020.
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Kari Lake was a member of the Republican Party until November 3,2006, when she changed her registration to become an independent.
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Kari Lake registered as a Democrat on January 4,2008, the day after the Iowa Democratic presidential caucuses were won by Obama.
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Kari Lake returned to being a Republican on January 31,2012.
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Kari Lake explained leaving the Republican Party in 2006 as a reaction to the then-ongoing Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
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Kari Lake had supported John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008.
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Kari Lake filed paperwork in June 2021 to seek the Republican nomination for governor of Arizona in the 2022 election to succeed incumbent governor Doug Ducey, who was term-limited.
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Kari Lake centered her campaign on promoting the false claim that the 2020 presidential election in Arizona and nationwide was "rigged and stolen"; Boris Epshteyn, a former Trump White House aide who promoted Trump's efforts to overturn the election results, attributed her victory in the Republican primary, despite being "outspent 10-to-1," to that stance.
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Kari Lake won the Republican primary in Arizona on August 2,2022, winning in all counties.
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Kari Lake said that as governor she would not tolerate mask and vaccine mandates.
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In November 2021, Kari Lake told a group of Republican retirees that she was taking hydroxychloroquine to prevent COVID-19 infection.
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Kari Lake stated that, as governor, she would work to have hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin produced in the state to "make it easier for us to get these lifesaving drugs".
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Kari Lake questioned the science behind COVID-19 vaccines and said that she had not been vaccinated.
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Kari Lake had been a leading proponent of the false claim that the 2020 presidential election was "stolen" from Trump.
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Kari Lake claimed President Joe Biden did not receive 81 million votes and that Arizona was actually won by Trump.
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Kari Lake tweeted quotes made by Sidney Powell on Lou Dobbs Tonight falsely asserting there was a sweeping election fraud conspiracy.
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Kari Lake has advocated imprisoning Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, her Democratic opponent in the gubernatorial race, on baseless and unspecified allegations of criminality related to the 2020 election.
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Kari Lake attacked Robson for failing to endorse false claims of election fraud.
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Kari Lake attended events headed by My Pillow founder Mike Lindell, a prominent promoter of false claims regarding fraud in the 2020 election.
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Fox News reported in July 2022 that nine days before the 2017 inauguration of Donald Trump, Kari Lake had posted a meme on Facebook that declared the inauguration a "national day of mourning and protest", in which she asked her followers how they would react to Trump's inauguration.
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Multiple media outlets projected on November 14,2022, that Kari Lake had narrowly lost the gubernatorial election to Hobbs.
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Conversely, the analysis found that Kari Lake received fewer than 6,000 votes from Democrat-leaning voters in Maricopa County.
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Kari Lake alleged voter disfranchisement due to ballot printing problems and long waiting lines in Maricopa County, which had elections run by local Republican officials.
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Kari Lake herself told her supporters to stay in line to vote, while a lawyer for Kari Lake's campaign assuaged concerns about using Box 3 to vote.
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Kari Lake's campaign filed a lawsuit on Election Day to extend voting for another three hours, but Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Tim Ryan declined to do so, stating: "The court doesn't have any evidence that any voter was precluded from their right to vote".
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Kari Lake self-identified as a "proud election denying deplorable" in December 2022.
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Kari Lake posted a false claim that almost 250,000 voting attempts failed during the 2022 Arizona elections, without proving that the votes were not counted; during the elections, votes that could not be initially scanned were later counted at another location.
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Richer alleged that Kari Lake had defamed him by repeatedly accusing him of intentionally sabotaging the 2022 election by printing wrong-sized ballots and injecting 300,000 illegal votes into the Maricopa County vote count; he alleged that Kari Lake's statements caused threats against him and his family, and resulted in him being ostracized from Republican donors and networks.
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In 2024, the Arizona Court of Appeals and the Arizona Supreme Court both rejected Kari Lake's appeal, clearing the way for a trial.
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In March 2024, Kari Lake requested a hearing for a default judgment against herself in the defamation case, deciding not to contest the defamation claim, and asking for the trial to proceed to the amount of damages she would have to pay Richer.
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Finchem and Kari Lake then appealed again to the Ninth Circuit, which tersely denied the appeal in June 2024.
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On December 9,2022, after Arizona certified the election results, Kari Lake filed a new suit in state court, seeking a court order to either overturn Hobbs' victory and declare Kari Lake as the winner of the election, or redo the election in Maricopa County.
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Kari Lake's complaint alleged that there were hundreds of thousands of illegal votes in the election, but provided no evidence in support of these claims.
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Kari Lake appealed the dismissal and the order directing her to pay $33,000 in fees.
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Kari Lake was not sanctioned by Thompson for her final claim, as he ruled that while there was no clear or convincing evidence for this claim, it was not necessarily "groundless".
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The Arizona Supreme Court in May 2023 ruled that it was employing "the extraordinary remedy of a sanction" on Kari Lake's lawyers, imposing a $2,000 fine on them for making "false factual statements to the Court".
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In March 2024, Kari Lake abandoned her appeal of Hannah's ruling.
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Kari Lake announced her candidacy for the 2024 United States Senate election in Arizona on October 10,2023.
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In November 2023, Politico noted that Kari Lake had pivoted from the fire-and-brimstone approach of her gubernatorial campaign to a more diplomatic approach, seeking to mend relationships with Republicans she had previously attacked.
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The Hill noted that Kari Lake "sought to strike a more conciliatory tone with Republicans" compared to her 2022 campaign.
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In January 2024, Kari Lake publicly called for Arizona Republican Party chair Jeff DeWit to resign for being "corrupt and compromised", with DeWit resigning a day later.
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DeWit explained his resignation as due to "Kari Lake's team" demanding it or he would "face the release of a new, more damaging recording".
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Kari Lake was defeated by Democratic nominee Ruben Gallego in the November 2024 general election.
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Kari Lake identifies as a conservative Republican and described herself in 2022 as a "Trump candidate".
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Kari Lake accused President Joe Biden and Democrats of harboring a "demonic agenda".
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In 2022, Kari Lake said that she considers abortion to be "the ultimate sin".
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Kari Lake praised the June 2022 Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization, which held that there was no federal right to abortion under the US Constitution, and overturned Roe v Wade.
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In 2022, Kari Lake repeatedly expressed support for an 1864 law from the Arizona Territory period that prohibited abortion in Arizona except to save the life of a mother, and she called for other states to adopt similar laws.
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In November 2023, Kari Lake reaffirmed her support for the 1864 abortion ban.
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In early 2024, Kari Lake shifted positions; her website said that she "does not support a federal ban on abortion" and in a March 2024 interview she denounced the 1864 anti-abortion law.
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Thereafter, on April 20,2024, Kari Lake changed her position again, returning to her earlier position of supporting the 1864 law, after Governor of Arizona Katie Hobbs and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes indicated that they would not prosecute offenders of the 1864 law.
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Kari Lake was criticized for deeming drag queens as being potentially harmful to children despite having attended drag events herself in the past.
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Kari Lake has been married to Jeff Halperin since August 1998.
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Kari Lake was previously married to Tracy Finnegan, an electrical engineer.
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Kari Lake previously identified as a Buddhist before 2015 according to her friends.