ABC News’ Jon Karl Presses Kari Lake on Her 2020 Election Claims: ‘Are You Really Saying You Would Throw Out the Ballots of 740,000 Arizonans?’

Kari Lake made headlines last week for a confrontational interview with CNN’s Dana Bash about her claims about the 2020 election, and on Sunday, the Republican candidate for Arizona governor faced off with ABC News’ Jonathan Karl for Round Two.

Last Sunday, Bash grilled Lake over her baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump, and asked her three separate times if she would concede if her opponent, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, won.

Lake dodged the question until Bash asked it for a third time, and finally responded, “I’m going to win the election and I will accept that result.”

After that interview, Lake claimed that CNN had “turned down” her audio, an accusation which CNN Communications’ Twitter account refuted by posting the full clip of the segment. “Hi Ms. Lake,” the account added as a comment. “Here is your full live interview on CNN. As you can see, there were no audio issues. Thank you for joining us this morning.”

Audio problems or no, Lake sang a very similar tune with Karl on Sunday, and recycled some previously debunked claims as well.

Karl asked Lake if she would try to change the election laws as governor, but she declined to give specifics:

KARL: As governor, would you seek to change the election laws? And specifically, would you look to limit early voting and mail-in voting in Arizona?

LAKE: I don’t know exactly how we’ll do it, but we will secure our elections, restore faith in our elections, make sure our elections are honest and transparent.

KARL: I assume everybody wants that. But specifically early voting and mail-in voting, which you’ve been very critical of — would you seek to limit it?

LAKE: I think, you know, a lot of things going back to when I first started voting back in the Eighties, we had Election Day. Our Constitution says Election Day. It doesn’t say election season, election month. And the longer you drag that out, the more fraught with problems there are.

Lake then criticized Hobbs over 6,000 ballots that had a printing error, only including the federal and not local races. Corrected ballots were being sent to the affected voters.

Karl tried again, and Lake responded with an untrue accusation:

KARL: My question is whether or not you would limit mail-in voting, limit early voting, given that so many people in this state, it’s like 90%, vote early in this state or use early ballots.

LAKE: We want to shore up our elections so they are very honest and every voter knows that it’s an honest system. Let me just give you a couple of facts: Two thousand mail-in ballots were accepted by Maricopa County after Election Day in 2020. After Election Day.

Election officials in Maricopa County said this was “just not true,” Karl reported. “In fact, no ballots were accepted after the Election Day 7 p.m. deadline.” Some ballots got a timestamp indicating they were scanned the next morning, but they had been properly turned in before the deadline on the actual Election Day.

“Lake offered other unsubstantiated and disproven claims,” Karl narrated, noting that Arizona’s election in 2020 was “the most scrutinized in the state’s history, and there is no evidence of widespread fraud.” Maricopa County’s comprehensive investigation found only “100 potentially questionable ballots cast out of 2.1 million — hardly enough to change the results,” he added.

Later in the interview, Karl brought up Lake’s previous refusal to accept the election results if she lost, and she gave a very similar answer as she gave to Bash last week:

KARL: Why it is that you have not said — or maybe you’ll do it now? — you have not said that you will accept the certified results of this election even if you lose, this election.

LAKE: I will accept the results of this election if we have a fair, honest, and transparent election. Absolutely, 100%.

KARL: So, if you were to lose — and you’re ahead — but if you were to lose and you went out and you had all your appeals, they went through —

LAKE: As long as it’s fair, honest, and transparent.

Lake took issue with the fact that Hobbs, in her role as secretary of state, would be the one certifying the election results.

Karl brought up another unfounded claim Lake had made about 740,000 ballots in Maricopa County during the 2020 election:

KARL: You said something last week. You said that there were 740,000 ballots with no chain of custody, 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 —

LAKE: 740,000 ballots violated chain of custody requirements in Maricopa County.

KARL: I mean, first of all, it’s, it’s not true. I mean, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors put out a 98-page report that went through these allegations.

LAKE: OK, that is a fact. That is a fact. Check your facts.

ABC News did check the facts. As Karl reported, when they contacted Maricopa County officials about this claim, they pointed to a statement they had issued last May “saying that the county always had control of the ballots, adding they, quote, were sealed in envelopes and secured in boxes that bipartisan couriers are prohibited from opening.”

Karl then asked her about the many Republicans who had said the 2020 election was not stolen:

KARL: But just to be clear, the Republicans on the Board of Supervisors, the Republican Governor [Doug Ducey], now the Republican candidate for Senate, running along with you, the Republican Attorney General under Donald Trump, Bill Barr — all said that there, that there wasn’t, you know, that the election was — was not stolen.

LAKE: Are we going to sit and litigate this? I’m happy to do it, but —

KARL: No, I just — I’m just wondering why they would all lie?

LAKE: – but you guys are obsessed. Well, we have a lot of corruption in the system, and they don’t want — I think a lot of people who were responsible for that election know that there were rules broken and laws broken, and they don’t want to admit fault, OK?

KARL: Even like Bill Barr?

LAKE: And that’s fine. We’re going to go forward and we’re going to make sure going forward our elections are secure.

Watch the video above, via ABC News.