Multiple Republican lawyers in Arizona say they and others who were involved in the party’s election litigation efforts in past cycles are keeping their distance this time around, in large part because of Senate candidate Kari Lake’s history of spurious fraud claims.
Earlier this month, Kory Langhofer resigned as the chief legal counsel for former President Donald Trump’s and the Republican National Committee’s “election integrity” operation in Arizona. He is now among more than a dozen Republican lawyers in the state who were a part of the GOP’s Arizona litigation team in past election cycles, including in 2020 and 2022, but are not slated to participate in its efforts this fall.
It’s a dynamic that has created uncertainty around the party’s much-touted legal efforts in a key state in the battle for the White House and the Senate weeks out from Election Day.
Langhofer, who filed the Trump campaign’s initial legal challenge of his loss in the state in 2020 and represented the Arizona state Senate in its discredited “Cyber Ninja”-led audit of that year’s election, declined to comment to NBC News about his departure.
Three GOP lawyers involved in previous Arizona campaigns, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak openly about their hesitation to engage this cycle, told NBC News that there is concern particularly over a penchant from Lake — who continues to challenge her loss in the 2022 gubernatorial race while sowing doubts about the upcoming election — to push litigation and question proceedings. One of the lawyers described it as “fatigue.”
“Kari creates this environment that is inhospitable for very reasonable people,” said one Arizona Republican attorney who was involved in past cycles.
Arizona has been a hotbed for GOP-fueled conspiracy theories about stolen elections since Trump’s 2020 defeat in the state and nationally in the presidential race.
“There’s just a perception that [Republican lawyers] are not doing enough proactively,” a second lawyer said about staving off supposed fraud. “But what’s enough? If you can’t identify something, then what do you do?”..