Kari Lake will not seek office again, following two failed campaigns in the state of Arizona.
Lake, who ran for governor in 2022 and a U.S. Senate seat in 2024, addressed her decision in a Saturday evening post on X, where she blamed a “corrupt machine” for keeping her from being elected.
“We know the movement that we have in Arizona, and I will never take that for granted,” the Republican wrote. “But there is a corrupt machine here that is hellbent on making sure I never hold office.”
“So, I won’t put my family (and myself) through the torture of running again,” Lake continued.
The right-wing politician appeared to be referencing audio of a conversation with former Arizona Republican party chair Jeff DeWit which leaked back in January. In the surreptitiously captured clip, he appeared to ask Lake to drop her senate bid in exchange for a job in the private sector.
“There are very powerful people that want to keep you out,” DeWit tells Lake in the recording. “But they’re willing to put their money where their mouth is in a big way.”
While DeWit described the leaked audio as a “selectively edited” distortion of his actual conversation with Lake, he subsequently resigned over the scandal.
In Lake’s Saturday statement, she went on to address her new role as director of the state-run media organization, Voice of America.
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“I will go to Washington, D.C., return @VOANews to its glory days, and help President Trump Make America Great Again,” she wrote.
President-elect Donald Trump’s decision to tap Lake as director of the historically nonpartisan VoA was met with concern when it was announced earlier this month.
The former news anchor has a history of peddling political misinformation, blaming her 2022 gubernatorial loss on election fraud. Similarly, she backed Trump’s own lies about a stolen 2020 election.