PRESCOTT VALLEY, Ariz. — 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 due to Senate candidate Kari Lake’s history of spurious fraud claims.
Earlier this month, Kory Langhofer resigned his position as the chief legal counsel for former President Donald Trump 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 state’s 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.
In addition to Lake, 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 [wrong to legally challenge], then what do you do?”
After Langhofer’s departure, the Trump campaign announced the hiring of Harmeet Dhillon, a Republican National Committeewoman and high-powered California lawyer, last week to relocate to Arizona for the final weeks of the campaign. Dhillon doesn’t have a license to practice law in Arizona, but a source familiar with the effort said that Dhillon would be expected to hire local counsel.
“I don’t know who is going to be in the war room or what other Arizona lawyers are going to be there,” said a third Republican lawyer in Arizona who is among those not involved in this year’s legal efforts. “I really don’t know what’s going on.”
Each of the three lawyers who spoke to NBC News said that they would still be willing to help the Arizona legal operation in the month ahead if legitimate concerns impacting the election arise.
After Langhofer’s departure, Lake’s senior campaign adviser Caroline Wren rebuked the RNC and the Trump campaign in a post on X for “telling us they have the ‘greatest election integrity program’ yet they don’t have a single attorney on the ground in Arizona.”
In April, the RNC, touted that it would build a massive “election integrity” operation with 100,000 attorneys and volunteers across the country to prevent fraud ahead of November’s election.
“Is it possible we are all being gaslit by the @gop regarding a fake ‘Election Integrity’ program that doesn’t actually exist?” Wren wrote in the post. “Yes, and frankly, it’s more plausible than it is possible.”
Days later, the RNC onboarded Dhillon to oversee the state’s legal front. Dhillon does not have a deep history in the state, though she worked for Lake on election week in 2022 when the then-gubernatorial candidate assailed Maricopa County elections officials for mechanical issues with some of its vote center printers that caused longer wait times in several precincts.
According to multiple sources engaged in deliberations over the decision to turn to Dhillon, the Trump and Lake campaigns are confident in her decision-making related to the filing of any potential litigation in the weeks ahead.
Still, the Arizona Republican Party is now relying on its party chairwoman, Gina Swoboda, to initiate dialogue with state and county elections officials. Swoboda does not have a law degree, though she previously worked in the Arizona secretary of state’s office.
In a statement, Swoboda expressed confidence in Dhillon.
“Harmeet is ready to lead the fight,” said Swoboda. “We are full steam ahead in our unprecedented dedication to Election Integrity,” she added.
Wren wrote in a statement to NBC News: “The Kari Lake campaign has full confidence in Harmeet Dhillon and Gina Swoboda to lead the Election Integrity efforts in Arizona and we are thrilled with this outcome.”
Lake’s legal efforts around her last election are still causing headaches for Arizona Republicans. Earlier this year, one of Lake’s attorneys, Bryan Blehm, was fined and suspended for lying to the Arizona Supreme Court during his representation of Lake’s 2022 election challenges.
An Arizona court is also due to determine the damages that Lake owes Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer as part of a defamation suit he filed against her following the 2022 election. Richer, a Republican, alleged in the suit that Lake “repeatedly and falsely accused Richer of causing Lake’s electoral defeat.”
Part of the intraparty legal tension also stemmed from the discovery by Richer, the Maricopa County Recorder, that 218,000 Arizona voters had never proven their citizenship as part of their process to determine voter eligibility — the result of an apparent clerical error years ago.
Earlier this month, Wren openly questioned why the Trump campaign had not filed a lawsuit to challenge the eligibility of the “218,000 unconfirmed ‘US citizen’ voters.”
The Arizona Republican Party, however, filed an amicus brief with the courts that sided with Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, calling for the court to maintain those voters’ eligibility — a plurality of whom were registered as Republicans — to allow them to take part in this fall’s election.
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