Left: Kari Lake speaking during the second day of the Republican National Convention, Tuesday, July 16, 2024, in Milwaukee (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite). Right: President Donald Trump at a press conference at the White House in Washington on February 27, 2025 (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Sipa USA; via AP Images).
A veteran federal judge has turned up the heat on U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior adviser Kari Lake after the self-declared acting CEO apparently failed to show that the Voice of America (VOA) is functioning even at the legal bare minimum.
The former news anchor and failed Republican political candidate in late July sparked the concern of Ronald Reagan-appointed Senior U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who blasted the government”s “cagey” answers and “misleading and contradictory information” on the operational status of the VOA.
Following President Donald Trump’s executive order deeming the agency “the voice of radical America” in need of silencing, a group of journalists led by former VOA White House bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara and fired Director of the VOA Michael Abramowitz responded by separately filing lawsuits against Lake over efforts to shut down the VOA news network and other federally-funded global media organizations despite a congressionally enacted “statutory mandate that VOA continuously broadcast to the world[.]”
In July, Lamberth issued a show cause order demanding answers on staffing levels, the extent to which VOA programming had been restored, and “[h]ow the defendants’ actions are consistent with VOA’s congressional appropriations” in the wake of a preliminary injunction. Now Lake will have to answer questions under oath or else face a contempt trial.
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The judge had called it “deeply troubling” that members of the Trump administration, particularly Lake and USAGM senior adviser Frank Wuco, couldn’t get their stories straight in declarations about how VOA is up and running as a “consistently reliable” source of news according to its “statutory mandate.”
Evidently, Lake’s ensuing declaration didn’t help her cause.
On Monday, Lamberth noted that the government has been “afforded […] multiple opportunities” to explain itself. But after careful study of those explanations, the judge remains unsatisfied.
“The Court,” Lamberth said, “finds that the defendants’ response fails to provide the information ordered in the Court’s Order to Show Cause—let alone explain how they are in compliance with the Court’s preliminary injunction, even on their preferred interpretation of the VOA’s statutory mandate.”
As a result, Lake, Wuco, and VOA director of Persian broadcasts Leili Soltani “shall sit for depositions” by Sept. 15 to give those answers — and in the meantime, they must “jointly and expeditiously” communicate with the plaintiffs to set dates for questioning under oath.
The judge emphasized that this would be the defendants’ “one final opportunity, short of a contempt trial, to provide such explanation[.]”
The depositions will come after Lamberth said “flip-flopping—in sworn declarations—raises severe concern” that the government hasn’t been “truthful” about the VOA’s status.
“The defendants have consistently refused to give the Court the full story regarding personnel actions,” read one heading in Lamberth’s ruling.
Marisa Sarnoff contributed to this report.
