[ad_1]
President Donald Trump’s legal team suffered another defeat in court today when a federal appeals court in Philadelphia roundly rejected the latest campaign effort to challenge the state’s election results.
President Donald Trump plays golf at Trump National Golf Club, Friday, November 27, 2020. Source: Associated Press
Trump’s attorneys vowed to appeal to the Supreme Court despite judges’ assessment that “the campaign’s claims are without merit.”
“Free and fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. 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 don’t have any here, ”Trump-appointed Third Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas wrote to the panel of three judges, all appointed by Republican presidents.
The case had been argued last week in a lower court by Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who insisted during five hours of oral arguments that the 2020 presidential election had been marred by widespread fraud in Pennsylvania. However, Giuliani did not offer any tangible proof of this in court.
US District Judge Matthew Brann, another Republican, had said the campaign’s flawed complaint, “like Frankenstein’s monster, has been stitched up at random” and denied Giuliani the right to amend it a second time.
The US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit called the reviews “useless.” Chief Justice D. Brooks Smith and Judge Michael Chagares were on the panel with Bibas, a former law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Trump’s sister, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, was on the court for 20 years and retired in 2019.
“Voters, not lawyers, elect the president. The ballots, not the summaries, decide the elections, “Bibas said in the ruling, which also denied the campaign’s request to prevent the state from certifying its results, a demand that he described as” impressive. “
In fact, Pennsylvania officials had announced Wednesday that they had certified their vote count for President-elect Joe Biden, who defeated Trump by more than 80,000 votes in the state. Nationally, Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris garnered nearly 80 million votes, a record in the US presidential election.
Trump has said he expects the Supreme Court to step into the race as it did in 2000, when its decision to stop the recount in Florida granted Republican George W. Bush the choice. On November 5, as the vote count continued, Trump tweeted that “the United States Supreme Court should decide!”
Since then, Trump and his surrogates have attacked the election as flawed and have filed a series of lawsuits to try to block the results in six battle states. But they have found little sympathy from judges, nearly all of whom dismissed their complaints about the security of mail-in ballots, which millions of people used to vote from home during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Trump is perhaps hoping that a Supreme Court he helped orient to a 6-3 conservative majority will be more open to his pleas, especially since the high court upheld Pennsylvania’s decision to accept mail-in ballots through Nov. 6. by just a vote of 4-4. month. Since then, Trump nominee Amy Coney Barrett has joined the court.
“The activist judicial machine in Pennsylvania continues to cover up allegations of mass fraud,” tweeted Trump’s attorney, Jenna Ellis, after today’s ruling. “SCOTUS!”
In the case at hand, the Trump campaign asked to disenfranchise the state’s 6.8 million voters or at least “select” the 1.5 million who voted by mail in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and other areas of the state. Democratic trend, the appeals court said.
“One might hope that in seeking such a surprising result, a plaintiff would come formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual evidence of rampant corruption,” Brann, a member of the conservative Federalist Society, wrote in his scathing ruling on November 21. That has not happened. “
A separate Republican challenge that reached the Pennsylvania Supreme Court this week seeks to prevent the state from further certifying contests on the ballot. The administration of Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf is fighting that effort, saying it would prevent the state legislature and congressional delegation from sitting down in the coming weeks.
Today, Trump said the November 3 election was still far from over. However, he said for the first time that he would leave the White House on January 20 if the Electoral College formalizes Biden’s victory.
“I certainly will. But you know it, ”Trump said at the White House, answering questions from reporters for the first time since Election Day.
On Twitter today, however, he continued to baselessly attack Detroit, Atlanta and other Democratic cities with large black populations as a source of “massive voter fraud.” And he claimed, without proof, that a Pennsylvania poll watcher had discovered computer memory units that “gave Biden 50,000 votes” each.
All 50 states must certify their results before the Electoral College meets on December 14, and any challenges to the results must be resolved by December 8. Biden won both the Electoral College and the popular vote by wide margins.
