Former AG candidate Abraham Hamadeh asks Arizona Supreme Court for new election trial

PHOENIX — Republican Attorney General candidate Abraham Hamadeh lost to Democrat Kris Mayes in the state’s 2022 election. However, he filed an official request for a new election trial to the Arizona Supreme Court on Friday, arguing 9,000 votes weren’t counted.

It’s not the first time he’s gone to court. Mohave County Superior Court Judge Lee Kantzen previously threw out Hamadeh’s challenge of the election results in 2022.

The 2022 election was one of the closest in the state’s history. Mayes won with 511 votes ahead of Hamadeh out of 2.5 million votes in total. However, an automatic recount determined Mayes was in fact only 280 votes ahead of Hamadeh.

Six months after Jantzen threw out his challenge, Hamadeh filed another request for a trial. However, Jantzen turned the bid down in mid-July.

Why is Hamadeh filing a third request for a new election trial?

Hamadeh’s most recent filing claims Jantzen acted improperly by limiting how much time his team had to prepare their legal arguments.

His Friday filing also argues that Jantzen’s time limit made it harder for his team to find evidence of voters’ ballots not being tabulated.

“We just filed a special action with the AZ Supreme Court asking for a new trial,” Hamadeh said in a video on his Twitter page.

“We found evidence that was being withheld from us from Katie Hobbs and from other counties that didn’t give us the evidence when we first had our trial back in December.” Hamadeh had previously made inaccurate claims about Gov. Hobbs’ role in the recount.

He claimed that political bias prevented justice.

“I’m a former prosecutor,” he said. “If I had done this to a criminal defendant, I would be disbarred.”