Election in the United States: the Supreme Court rejects ‘the great’, the republican attack on Biden’s victory

The Supreme Court has rejected a lawsuit backed by US President Donald Trump to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory, ending a desperate attempt to get state and federal judges to dismiss legal matters in court more. top of the nation.

The court order was the second this week in which it rejected Republican requests to participate in the outcome of the 2020 elections and override the will of voters expressed in an election deemed free and fair by Republican and Democratic officials. The justices rejected an appeal from Pennsylvania Republicans on Tuesday.

The Electoral College meets Monday to formally elect Biden as the next president.

Trump had called the lawsuit filed by Texas against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin “the big one” that would end with the Supreme Court undoing the substantial majority of Biden’s Electoral College and allowing Trump to serve another four years in the White House.

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In a short order, the court said Texas does not have the legal right to sue those states because “it has not demonstrated a judicially recognizable interest in the way another state conducts its elections.”

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, who have previously said the court does not have the authority to reject interstate lawsuits, said they would have heard the Texas complaint. But they would not have done what Texas wanted pending resolution of the lawsuit, and they sidelined 62 electoral votes from those four states for Biden.

Three Trump appointees sit in the high court. In his effort to get the latest of his nominees, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, quickly confirmed, Trump said she would be needed for any post-election lawsuits. Barrett appears to have been involved in both cases this week. None of those Trump appointees noted a disagreement in either case.

Eighteen other states won by Trump in last month’s election, 126 Republican members of Congress and Trump himself joined Texas in asking justices to take up the case that sought to prevent voters from voting for Biden.

All four states sued by Texas had urged the court to dismiss the case as unfounded. They were backed by 22 other states and the District of Columbia.

Republican support for the lawsuit and its call to cast millions of votes in four battle states based on baseless claims of fraud was an extraordinary display of the party’s willingness to subvert the will of the voters. House members who backed the lawsuit included Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and minority whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana.

“This lawsuit is an act of desperation by the Republican Party (Republican Party), violating the principles enshrined in our American democracy,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote in a message to Democrats Friday.

Some Republicans have expressed concern over the case. Many others have remained silent even as Trump endlessly repeated claims that he missed out on a second term due to widespread fraud.

“Texas is a big state, but I don’t know exactly why it has the right to tell four other states how to conduct their elections. So I’m having a hard time figuring out the basis for that lawsuit, ”Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander told NBC’s Chuck Todd in an interview for Meet the press which will air on Sunday.

To be clear, there has been no evidence of widespread fraud.

The Texas complaint repeated false, refuted, and unsubstantiated allegations about the four-state vote that it was for Trump’s Democratic challenger. Never before has the high court been asked for such a dramatic remedy.

Two days after Paxton filed his lawsuit, Trump jumped to the higher court case. Hours later, the president held a meeting at the White House, scheduled before the lawsuit was filed, with a dozen Republican attorneys general, including Paxton and several others who backed the effort.

“If the Supreme Court shows great wisdom and courage, the American people will win perhaps the most important case in history, and our electoral process will be respected again!” he tweeted on Friday afternoon. Trump had spent the week relentlessly tweeting about the Texas case using the hashtag “recall” and falsely claiming that he had won the election but had been robbed.

Still, some of the top Republican state prosecutors who urged the court to get involved recognized that the effort was a long shot and sought to distance themselves from Trump’s unfounded fraud allegations. Wayne Stenehjem of North Dakota, among the attorneys general who supported the case, said that North Dakota does not allege voter fraud in the four states in question.

“We are careful about that,” said Stenehjem, noting that his office has received thousands of calls and emails from voters asking the state to support the lawsuit. “But it is worth it for the Supreme Court to step in and resolve it once and for all,” he said.

The case has inflamed already high tensions over the elections. West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said his office staff received two death threats Thursday after he signed the brief supporting the case.

The lawsuit has also divided officials in some states.

Montana Attorney General Tim Fox supported the Texas case, although he said the lawsuit was “late” and its chances “are slim at best.” Fox said the case raised “important constitutional questions about the separation of powers and the integrity of vote-by-mail ballots in those accused states.”

But Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock urged the court to dismiss the case. He said the fact that Texas is not suing Montana, which Trump won, even though the state similarly used mail-in ballots underscores that “this action has less to do with electoral integrity than with attempting to reverse the will. of the electorate “.

The litigation upset the Democratic attorneys general. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, co-chair of the Democratic Attorneys General Association, called the attempt to revoke the votes “unconscionable.” The support among other prominent attorneys was disturbing, Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, who is also co-chair of the Democratic group of attorneys general, told The Associated Press.

“I think these people are bowing to a president who has implemented some level of control and authority over the duly elected attorneys general in their states in a way that is regrettable,” he said.

Many of the attorneys general supporting the case have shown greater political ambitions.

In Kansas, Republican Attorney General Derek Schmidt, who is considering a bid for governor in 2022, announced that he would back the effort just hours after former Republican Gov. Jeff Colyer, another potential gubernatorial candidate, tweeted that Schmidt’s office should do what.

Despite political pressure, the Republican attorney general of Idaho decided not to join Texas.

“As is sometimes the case, the legally correct decision may not be the politically expedient decision,” Lawrence Wasden said in a statement. “But my responsibility is to the state of Idaho and the rule of law.”

Merchant reported from Houston and Richer reported from Boston. Associated Press writers David Pitt in Des Moines, Iowa; John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; Amy Beth Hanson in Helena, Montana; James MacPherson in Bismarck, North Dakota; Keith Ridler in Boise, Idaho; Michelle Price in Las Vegas and Sophia Eppolito and Lindsay Whitehurst in Salt Lake City.