Election denier Kari Lake is scheduled to hold an “emergency” press conference as she makes a final push for the Arizona governorship.
In a “media advisory”, the Lake campaign said that the press briefing would start at 3.30pm local time – 6.30pm ET – at the headquarters in Pheonix, Arizona, with doors opening at 3pm.
No description of what the press briefing would entail was provided, but it comes as Phoenix Police announced the arrest of a suspect in the burglary of the office of Ms Lake’s opponent, Democratic nominee and current Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs.
Police are expected to share more details about the arrest late on Thursday. A Hobbs spokesperson has accused Ms Lake of “spreading dangerous misinformation and inciting threats against anyone they see fit”.
Ms Lake has suggested that the break-in “Jussie Smollett part two,” referring to the actor who orchestrated a fake public attack on himself in January 2019.
The break-in came amid widespread reports of voter intimidation picking up across the state ahead of the midterms.
Phoenix police and the Hobbs campaign confirmed that on Tuesday afternoon, officers responded to a call at about 2pm regarding a commercial burglary at the secretary of state’s downtown office, AZCentral reported.
“No suspects have been identified. This is still an active investigation with detectives checking all security cameras in attempts to identify and locate the subject involved,” the police statement added.
In a statement regarding the break-in, Ms Hobbs confirmed the police report and thanked the Phoenix officers for their quick efforts but acknowledged that this isn’t the first, nor will it likely be the last, incident of its kind, which she characterised as a form of intimidation against her campaign.
“Secretary Hobbs and her staff have faced hundreds of death threats and threats of violence over the course of this campaign,” the statement, shared on her Twitter account, read before tying the recent break-in back to her Trump-endorsed and election-denying opponent.
“The threats against Arizonans attempting to exercise their constitutional rights and their attacks on elected officials are the direct result of a concerted campaign of lies and intimidation,” the statement said.
“We definitely don’t know anything about it, so it’s a lot of allegations they’re just throwing around,” said Ross Trumble, a spokesman for the Lake campaign, in a statement to NBC.
