US Elections: Republican Justices Deny Pennsylvania Appeal, Trump Will Judge Supreme Court

A judge appointed by Donald Trump joined two other Conservatives in slapping the president’s appeal on his most important lawsuit.

Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the US election result has suffered another monumental setback after a panel of Republican-appointed conservative judges denied his campaign’s latest appeal in Pennsylvania.

The president’s legal team, led by former New York City attorney and mayor Rudy Giuliani, was appealing a federal court ruling by Judge Matthew Brann, which overruled the campaign’s attempt to prevent Pennsylvania from certifying Joe’s victory. Biden there.

A three-judge panel of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals considered the campaign argument. In a withering 21-page decision today, Judge Stephanos Bibas, who was appointed by Trump, concluded that the president’s lawsuit “has no merit.”

The unanimous decision was joined by Judge Michael Chagares and Chief Judge of the Third Circuit, David Brooks Smith, both appointed by former Republican President George W. Bush.

“Free and fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Accusations of injustice are serious. But calling an election unfair does not mean that it is so,” Judge Bibas wrote.

“The charges require specific indictments and then evidence. We don’t have any here.”

“Trump’s presidential campaign claims the 2020 Pennsylvania election was unfair. But as attorney Rudolph Giuliani noted, the campaign ‘alleges no fraud,'” he continued.

When questioned by Judge Brann during oral arguments, Giuliani admitted that the lawsuit “was not a case of fraud.”

That admission was surprising, perhaps, to anyone who had heard only Giuliani’s rhetoric in public or read Trump’s tweets. But it was very much in line with the campaign court documents, which never alleged a specific case of electoral fraud.

Rather, Trump’s team sought to invalidate hundreds of thousands of ballots based on legal technicalities and the suspicion that fraud may have been allowed to occur.

There were two central threads in his argument.

First, the campaign claimed that election officials in Philadelphia, where Biden’s support was most concentrated, had prevented his observers from properly observing the vote count.

The Philadelphia Supreme Court, the highest court at the state level, has ruled that nothing wrong happened.

Second, Giuliani argued that Trump supporters had lost their rights because some (mostly Democratic-leaning) counties allowed voters to “cure” technical problems with their mail-in ballots, while others did not.

So, for example, if a ballot was going to be rejected because it was sent in the wrong type of envelope, officials in some counties took steps to contact the voter in question, giving them the opportunity to cast a provisional ballot to replace the one. defective.

The campaign said this was unfair, because most of the counties that facilitated the healing leaned toward Biden, and most of those that did not lean toward Trump.

Judge Brann had little patience with this argument, describing it as a “Frankenstein’s monster” of legal theories that had been “tied together at random.”

“He objects to the Pennsylvania secretary of state and some counties restricting election observers and letting voters correct technical defects on their ballots by mail. He offers nothing more,” said Judge Bibas, summarizing the arguments of the Bell.

“This case is not about whether those claims are true. Rather, the campaign appeals on very narrow ground: whether the District Court abused its discretion by not allowing the campaign to amend its complaint a second time. It did not. “.

The context here is that the Trump campaign shifted its complaint to the middle of the case in federal court, eliminating some of its requests for legal recourse.

Specifically, he abandoned his attempt to cast 680,000 votes based on the claim about his election observers.

Then, on the eve of oral arguments, the existing legal team dropped the lawsuit, to be replaced the next morning by Giuliani. He asked Judge Brann to let the campaign change its complaint again, to reintroduce the things it had just released.

Judge Brann denied that request.

A central part of the Third Circuit’s decision was its assessment that the Trump campaign had sought to litigate issues at the state level in federal court.

In other words, having failed to get anywhere in the correct jurisdiction, he launched a pointless argument in an effort to get his complaints processed in the wrong jurisdiction.

“Most of the claims in the Second Amended Lawsuit boil down to matters of state law. But Pennsylvania law is willing to overlook many technical flaws. It favors the counting of votes as long as there is no fraud,” the judge said. Bibas.

“In fact, the campaign has already litigated and lost many of these problems in state courts.

“The campaign tries to repackage these claims of state laws as unconstitutional discrimination. However, its allegations are vague and conclusive.

“He never alleges that someone treated the Trump campaign or Trump’s votes worse than they treated the Biden campaign or Biden’s votes.”

“Federal law does not require election observers or specify how they can observe. Nor does it say anything about correcting technical errors in state law on ballots.

“Each of these defects is fatal (to the lawsuit) and the proposed Second Amended Complaint does not fix them. Therefore, the District Court duly denied authorization to amend.”

In short, the Third Circuit fully supported Judge Brann’s decision not to allow the campaign to change its complaint again.

“The campaign also does not deserve a court order to overturn Pennsylvania’s vote certification,” Judge Bibas wrote.

“The campaign’s claims have no merit. The number of ballots it specifically questions is far less than the margin of victory of roughly 81,000 votes. And it never claims that there was fraud or that the votes were cast by illegal voters.

“Throwing out millions of ballots by mail would be drastic and unprecedented, disenfranchising a large swath of the electorate and also upset all elections against. The remedy would be grossly disproportionate to the procedural challenges posed.”

Trump’s ultimate goal here was to invalidate the entire election in Pennsylvania, meaning that the Republican-controlled state legislature would elect its 20 presidential electors.

The Third Circuit bit down on that effort scathingly.

“The Second Amended Complaint seeks impressive relief: prevent the Commonwealth from certifying its results, or declare the results flawed and order the Pennsylvania General Assembly, not the voters, to elect Pennsylvania’s presidential electors. It cites no authority. for this drastic remedy. ” Judge Bibas said.

“Voters, not attorneys, choose the president. Ballots, not reports, decide elections. Ballots here are governed by Pennsylvania election law.

“No federal law requires poll watchers to specify where they should live or how close they can be when votes are counted. Nor does federal law govern whether to count ballots with minor flaws from state law or to let voters remedy those flaws.

“Those are all matters of state law, not ones we can hear about. And previous lawsuits have rejected those claims.

“In trying to turn these claims from state laws into federal law, the campaign alleges discrimination. But its alchemy cannot transmute lead into gold.

“The campaign never alleges that any ballot was fraudulent or cast by an illegal voter. It never alleges that any defendant treated the Trump campaign or its votes worse than they treated the Biden campaign or its votes. it does so.

“The Second Amended Complaint still suffers from these fundamental flaws, so granting permission to amend would have been futile. And there is no basis for granting the unprecedented injunction sought here.”

You can read the full ruling here.

The Trump campaign says it now intends to appeal to the United States Supreme Court. One of the president’s attorneys, Jenna Ellis, condemned Pennsylvania’s “activist judicial machine” and accused it of “covering up” allegations of fraud.

I mentioned this before, but just to reiterate, the Third Circuit panel consisted of three conservative justices, all appointed by Republican presidents.

At the district level, Judge Brann was appointed by Obama but was a lifelong Republican and a former member of the conservative Federalist Society.

Legal commentators say the Supreme Court is unlikely to even hear the campaign’s appeal, much less rule in its favor.

“This is a complete repudiation of the ridiculous Trump campaign lawsuit by three Republican-appointed judges,” said election law expert Rick Hasen.

“It shows the absurdity of the litigation. In addition to the fact that the case was not well protected by lawyers (Rudy Giuliani’s oral argument was the worst I have heard in 25 years of tracking electoral law cases), the case was so weak and conclusive in its accusations of wrongdoing. ” as it was spectacularly undemocratic.

“As ideologically divided as the Supreme Court is, this kind of absurd and dangerous litigation will not have a friendly reception there.”

Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, said the campaign lawsuit “had no chance of success.”

“I’m not sure how a Republican-appointed three-judge panel could send a clearer and stronger message to everyone involved that this is over,” said Professor Vladeck.

“Yes, the Trump campaign can now go to SCOTUS, but with what? The court is never going to deal with this fire of a lawsuit.”