Pakistan's Supreme Court has ruled that former prime minister Imran Khan's dramatic arrest on corruption charges this week was illegal.

The court ordered Mr Khan's immediate release. His lawyers had argued that his detention from court premises in Islamabad on Tuesday was unlawful.

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was staring into the political abyss on Tuesday when a federal electoral court (TSE) justice voted to bar him from office until 2030 for anti-democratic abuse of power during last year's fraught election.

The vote by Benedito Goncalves, the lead justice in the case against Bolsonaro, does not amount to a full conviction, but may set the tone for subsequent judge's votes.

The outlook appears increasingly bleak for Bolsonaro, a career politician who was until recently Brazil's most powerful man. The far-right nationalist narrowly lost Brazil's most troubled election in a generation to his leftist rival Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and now faces an institutional reckoning for having forged a nationwide election denial movement.....

Brazil's Supreme Electoral Court has reached the majority it needs to bar former president Jair Bolsonaro from public office until 2030 for his conduct during last year's fraught election.

Five out of seven justices voted to convict Bolsonaro for abuse of power and misuse of the media last year, when he summoned ambassadors to vent unfounded claims about Brazil's electronic voting system.

Bolsonaro has denied wrongdoing, and his lawyers have pledged to appeal to the Supreme Court.......

....“Kari Lake, who I absolutely adored as a candidate and am still heartsick she’s not governor (yes, arrest Katie Hobbs as @DeaceOnline says), is the First Lady of MAGA. Yet her new book never cracked the top 100 on Amazon and is down to 555 today.

“Any theories as to why?”.....

A federal judge on Friday ordered failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, along with her attorney Alan Dershowitz and fellow right-wing fringe candidate Mark Finchem, to pay a $122,000 fine for their pursuit of a “frivolous” lawsuit to overturn the 2022 election, The Messenger reports.

Lake has filed multiple lawsuits in connection with the 2022 election, of which one lists Finchem, a member of the extremist Oath Keepers who lost his bid to become Arizona’s Secretary of State, as a co-plaintiff, the report said.

Adam Klasfeld writes for The Messenger that, “After Lake and Finchem’s lawsuits failed, the fallout over their efforts began.”

Klasfeld notes that a federal judge in December described the allegations that were the basis for lawsuits filed by Lake, Finchem and Dershowitz as “false, misleading and unsupported.”

Dershowitz has since distanced himself from Lake’s lawsuits, according to the report, noting that the former Harvard professor claimed he isn’t an election denier but that his signature appears on the complaint in connection with a narrow constitutional issue......

Bruce Lehrmann and Network 10 are wrestling over the details of a multimillion-dollar payout after the former political staffer’s defamation lawsuit was sensationally dismissed.

Mr Lehrmann was dealt a devastating blow in April when Justice Michael Lee found he had, on the balance of probabilities, raped Brittany Higgins at Parliament House in March 2019.

The judge dismissed Mr Lehrmann’s claim he had been defamed by a 2021 interview between Ms Higgins and journalist Lisa Wilkinson on The Project in which Ms Higgins alleged she was raped by a colleague after a night out.

Justice Lee found it was more likely than not that Mr Lehrmann was “hellbent on having sex” with Ms Higgins and that “he did not care one way or another whether (she) understood or agreed to what was going on”......

Arizona Republican Kari Lake received good news in her campaign for the state's open Senate seat, according to a new poll commissioned by the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC).

An internal poll of 800 likely voters, conducted by Peak Insights from July 31 to August 5 and shared exclusively with National Journal's hotline, shows the race for independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema's seat is deadlocked. Sinema announced in March that she is not running for reelection, leaving the seat open.

The poll shows Lake and Democratic Representative Ruben Gallego tied at 46 percent, with 8 percent undecided. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.......