The Daily Fuckup

Trump’s campaign lawyers made a point in Arizona that sat uneasily beside the rhetoric coming from the candidate himself: in court, they said the case was not about fraud.

At a Maricopa County hearing on November 12, 2020, Trump campaign lawyer Kory Langhofer told the judge, “We are not alleging fraud in this lawsuit. We are not alleging anyone stealing the election.” He also framed the dispute as one involving a limited number of alleged good-faith errors in how ballots were handled or machines were operated. ([govinfo.gov](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-J6-TRANSCRIPT-CTRL0000055538/pdf/GPO-J6-TRANSCRIPT-CTRL0000055538.pdf?utm_source=openai))

That mattered because it drew a hard line between the lawsuit and the public messaging. Trump was still telling supporters the election had been stolen. His lawyer in court was doing something much narrower: arguing about specific ballot-handling problems, not advancing a fraud claim. That does not end the broader political fight over the 2020 election, but it does show that the Arizona case itself was presented in more limited terms than the public accusations around it. ([time.com](https://time.com/5914377/donald-trump-no-evidence-fraud/?utm_source=openai))

The practical result was simple. In open court, the campaign’s position was not that a stolen election had to be overturned. It was that the plaintiffs wanted a judge to review a small set of alleged irregularities. That is a different legal theory, and a much smaller one. ([cronkitenews.azpbs.org](https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2020/11/12/trumps-voting-irregularity-claims-get-cold-reception-in-court-hearing/?utm_source=openai))