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WASHINGTON, Nov. 28 (Bernama): A federal appeals court in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania on Friday upheld an earlier lower court ruling against President Donald Trump’s campaign, dealing another blow to the president’s effort to overturn the electoral results in the state. Reported the Xinhua news agency.
The three-judge panel of the US Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia found that the Trump campaign’s widespread voter fraud allegations in the state “are without merit,” in the court’s opinion.
“Free and fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy,” Trump-appointed Judge Stephanos Bibas wrote in the 21-page opinion. “The charges of injustice are serious. But calling an election unfair does not mean that it is. The charges require specific indictments and then evidence. We have neither.”
The three Republican-appointed judges ruled that United States District Judge Matthew Brann’s ruling last week to reject the Trump campaign lawsuit that seeks to avoid state certification of his election results for the Democratic president-elect Joe Biden was justified.
The campaign lawsuit alleged that some Pennsylvania counties allowed voters by mail to fix ballot problems by casting provisional ballots.
Brann said in a scathing opinion that the lawsuit provided “tense legal arguments without merit and speculative allegations, without filing in the operative complaint and without supporting evidence.”
The judge appointed by former President Barack Obama said he could not find any case in which a plaintiff “has sought such a drastic remedy in an election contest.”
In response, Trump said on Twitter that the ruling was “quite a continuation of the never-ending Witch Hunt,” adding that Brann “would not even allow us to present our case or evidence.” Brann did not allow the campaign to file an amended complaint, leading to the campaign’s appeal.
“The Campaign never alleges that any ballot was fraudulent or cast by an illegal voter,” wrote Bibas, a Third Circuit judge. “It never alleges that any defendant treated the Trump campaign or their votes worse than they treated the Biden campaign or their votes. Calling something discrimination does not do so. The Second Amended Lawsuit still suffers from these fundamental flaws, for which granting permission to amend would have been useless. “
The campaign will reportedly appeal the case to the US Supreme Court.
Pennsylvania, known as the state of Keystone, certified its election results for Biden on Tuesday, formally awarding his 20 electoral votes to the former vice president. – Bernama
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