Nature is healing: A new Kari Lake lawsuit has been filed

Kari Lake is back in her natural habitat: Court.

A little more than two weeks after Lake finally secured a government gig, the litigious ex-candidate has been named in a federal lawsuit. On Tuesday, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction forcing Lake’s new agency, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, to pay money the two plaintiffs say they’re owed.

Lake, who assumed the role of special advisor at USAGM earlier this month, is named as a defendant in her official capacity.

Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty provide news coverage for 47 million people in 23 countries, including many where freedom of the press has been curtailed. Their funding is approved by Congress, but on March 15, Lake sent a letter to terminate the grant agreement for both because it “no longer effectuates agency priorities.” She cited an executive order from President Donald Trump, issued the day before, aimed at reducing the federal bureaucracy.

Lake has bragged about swinging an axe around USAGM. On Steve Bannon’s War Room, she said she’d be “slimming this agency down, way down. It’s going on an Ozempic diet.” She’s fired more than 1,000 USAGM employees and ended many grant contracts, which she doesn’t appear to have the legal authority to do.

Lake and USAGM did not respond to Phoenix New Times’ request for comment on the lawsuit.

The lawsuit by Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, which also names acting USAGM CEO Victor Morales as a defendant, points out that Congress appropriated their funding and only Congress can withdraw it. “In this country, Congress — not a senior advisor to the acting CEO of an agency — has the power of the purse,” two outlets said in a court document. “The United States Agency for Global Media is currently defying multiple acts of Congress by refusing to provide congressionally approved funds.”

The suit asks the court to grant a temporary restraining order to provide the organization with its promised congressionally appropriated funds through March 14 — a total of $7.4 million. Through a continuing resolution, Congress has already appropriated an additional $77 million for the media organizations from March 15 to September 30.

The radio outlet said they will “soon be nearly unable to operate,” forced to terminate staff and leases for offices in the Czech Republic, Latvia, and Ukraine. Additionally, the organization says it will no longer be able to provide security protections to journalists who “may face deportation to authoritarian countries where their security — and even perhaps their lives — will be at risk.”

Because those journalists operate in countries with regimes hostile to the press, the suit says, the grant funding is critical “to protecting journalists who face harassment, abduction and threats of assassination” and also “the threat of torture and imprisonment because of their work.”

“This is not the time to cede terrain to propaganda and censorship of America’s adversaries,” RFE/RL’s President and CEO Stephen Capus wrote in a statement. “We believe the law is on our side and that the celebration of our demise by despots around the world is premature.”

Lake is no stranger to court battles, though this will be her first as a government official. Arizona’s infamous former news anchor has been a staple of legal filings since launching a doomed bid for governor in 2022. She persistently attempted to overturn her loss to Gov. Katie Hobbs even as she ran for Senate last year. She was also sued by former Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer for defamation over baseless accusations that he facilitated election fraud.

In November, the Arizona Supreme Court rejected Lake’s last election challenge and she settled her defamation suit with Richer, leaving her lawyers without billable hours. She now benefits from government lawyers — who should be a step up from her past attorneys, who kept getting sanctioned — but she’ll likely also be the target of more litigation.

That’s the price of finally getting a job in government: When someone has a problem, you’re the one who gets sued.