A few hours in and Kari Lake's trial is already over (or it should be)

Kari Lake on Wednesday opened her (second) trial challenging the 2022 election ... with a complete and total fizzle.

Her attorney, Kurt Olsen, told the judge he’d be presenting evidence that Maricopa County didn’t verify the voter signatures on “hundreds of thousands” of early ballots, instead hiring signature reviewers who just went through the motions while the county looked on.

“This isn’t a question of not doing it well enough,” he said. “They’re simply not doing signature verification.”

Then he called his first witness: A “whistleblower” who proceeded to annihilate Lake’s case.

Lake's star witness was great ... for the defense

Jacqueline Onigkeit, who worked as a level one reviewer, spent more than an hour explaining the lengths to which county went to verify signatures — the weeklong training of workers, the three levels of signature review, the admonition to get it right.

“They (supervisors) told us, ‘You need to be very cautious. You need to pay attention to what you’re doing and remember that whatever you reject or approve, you can be called in to testify,’ ” she testified.

As a witness for the defense, Onigkeit was dynamite. 

The problem is, she was supposed to be the star witness for Lake.

More from Roberts:Day 2 of Lake trial is a big bust

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson laid out what Lake needs to do to win, based on the challenge brought by her lawyers.

She has to prove the county didn't verify any signatures.

“The Court can — and does — hold Plaintiff to her counsels’ representation of the scope of her claim at Trial, that no signature verification was conducted,” he wrote, in a ruling issued on Tuesday.

Her attorneys were schooled by the judge

Two hours in and this trial was already over. Or it should be.

And by the lunch break on Thursday — a day and a half into what’s supposed to be a two-day trial — things weren’t looking any better for Lake.

Or for her attorneys, who mostly bumbled around and had to be schooled by Judge Thompson in how to try a case.

“I feel like I’m teaching a seminar up here,” Thompson said, as he allowed Olsen leeway to correct a mistake that would have prevented his own expert witness from testifying about the speed of the county’s signature review.

Olsen told Thompson that signature reviewers were clicking through the signatures “as fast as they could tap the keyboard, with more than 274,000 ballots approved in less than three seconds each.”

Then he showed a video of a guy who appears to be doing just that.

It might have been an impressive visual — except for the fact that Deputy Maricopa County Attorney Tom Liddy told the judge the guy was pulled from the job for not doing the job.

That just bolstered the county’s case that it was taking signature verification seriously.

'Whistleblowers' said they verified signatures

Lake’s two “whistleblowers” also bolstered the county’s case.

Onigkeit said signature reviewers were “bombarded” with ballots the day after the election but that they were repeatedly warned about moving too quickly.

“We were informed … that we were being audited every day and if we were approving too many signatures or rejecting too many signatures we’d be called into an office and talked to and if it happened again, we’d be let go.”

What's next?Lake's signature verification dispute continues

Lake’s second “whistleblower,” Andy Myers, was no more helpful to Lake’s case.

He confirmed that he both verified and cured signatures, though he questioned why it took only three days to verify the 298,000 early ballots that rolled in on Election Day.

“It was kind of a shock,” he said. “They walked in on Friday to tell us, we got it done. I told my wife that morning that I was going be working weekends because of the volume and nothing happened.”

This is more 'bust' than blockbuster

But Maricopa County Elections Director Rey Valenzuela testified that 155 county employees across three county offices were reviewing signatures, not just the 24 to 40 inside the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center where Myers was working.

None of which seems remotely relevant at this point.

According to the judge, Lake must prove by “clear and convincing evidence” that the county didn’t verify any signatures.

Yet even her own whistleblowers beg to differ.

“I was very focused on verifying signatures and making sure the signatures matched,” Onigkeit testified.

As blockbusters go, Kari Lake is halfway there.

If you count the “bust” part.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

Support local journalism: Subscribe to azcentral.com today.