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WASHINGTON: Humiliation in Court, Witnesses Delivering More Sham Than Facts, and Chief Counsel Fighting Coronavirus – Donald Trump’s Efforts to Override the Results of the November 3 Presidential Election Are Not Going Well.
And time is running out.
The Electoral College will meet on December 14 to certify the victory of Democrat Joe Biden and Tuesday is the deadline for the challenges to be resolved at the state level.
One of the latest blows to Trump’s attempt to tarnish the vote with unsubstantiated fraud allegations was the announcement Sunday that former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani was hospitalized with COVID-19.
Giuliani, 76, has been at the forefront of Trump’s campaign legal team, filing lawsuits that seek to expose voter fraud and holding public hearings in swing states where Trump narrowly lost.
Trump’s campaign attorney Rudy Giuliani has been hospitalized with COVID-19. (Photo: AFP / Jeff Kowalsky)
However, many of the witnesses Giuliani presented have tested credulity and the flimsy lawsuits are often based on intricate conspiracy theories that have been repeatedly debunked by state election officials, many of them Republicans.
One witness, Melissa Carone, who appeared alongside Giuliani at a hearing in Michigan, was so hyped that she ended up going viral and being lampooned on the comedy show Saturday Night Live.
Carone had already been deemed “not credible” by a Michigan judge, but that didn’t stop Giuliani from bringing her before the Michigan House of Representatives hearing.
When the lawsuits brought by Giuliani and other Trump allies reached court, the judges threw them out, sometimes in scathing terms.
The latest loss, which brought the Trump campaign win-loss record in court to 1-47, came Monday in Michigan, where Trump lost to Biden by 154,000 votes.
“People have spoken,” wrote US District Court Judge Linda Parker. “This case represents well the phrase: ‘this ship has sailed'”.
Parker said the lawsuit seeking to overturn Biden’s Michigan victory was “dazzling in scope and staggering in scope.”
“If granted, the relief would disenfranchise the more than 5.5 million Michigan citizens who, with dignity, hope and the promise of a voice, participated in the 2020 general election,” he said.
President-elect Joe Biden will take office on January 20, 2021 (Photo: AFP / Alex Wong).
The judge said the lawsuit appeared to be primarily aimed at shaking “people’s faith in the democratic process and their confidence in our government.”
‘UNDERVERTED CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY’
A letter published Monday by more than 1,500 attorneys across the country made a similar point, accusing Giuliani and other attorneys of filing “frivolous legal claims” in an attempt to “undermine the faith of citizens in the integrity of our elections.” .
They noted that election security officials and Trump’s own attorney general, Bill Barr, 74, have said there is no evidence of significant electoral fraud.
“President Trump’s barrage of litigation is a pretext for a campaign to undermine public confidence in the outcome of the 2020 elections, which will inevitably subvert constitutional democracy,” they said.
“Unfortunately, the president’s main agents and facilitators in this effort are attorneys, bound by their oath and ethical rules to uphold the rule of law.”
Nowhere has the pushback for Trump been stronger than in Georgia, where Republican officials from the governor down have rebuffed his efforts.
Republican Lt. Governor Geoff Duncan accused Trump on Monday of spewing “mountains of misinformation” in his attempt to discredit the vote in Georgia, a once-trusted Republican state where Biden won by about 12,000 votes.
A man who opposes US President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the election results at a rally in North Carolina. (Photo: AFP / Logan Cyrus)
Duncan told “CBS This Morning” that Trump’s campaign voter fraud allegations were “literally things that can be debunked in 10 seconds or less.”
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp rejected a demand by Trump to convene a special session of the Georgia legislature to change the 16 delegates of the State Electoral College from Biden to Trump.
And last week, another Georgia official, voting system manager Gabriel Sterling, said Trump’s rhetoric could lead to violence.
“Someone is going to get hurt. Someone is going to get shot. Someone is going to die. It’s not okay,” Sterling said.
Dozens of pro-Trump protesters, some of them armed, showed up Saturday night in front of the home of Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, the state’s director of elections, shouting obscenities.
Supporters at a rally for US President Donald Trump in Georgia. (Photo: AFP / Andrew Caballero-Reynolds)
“Through threats of violence, intimidation and harassment, the armed individuals outside my home and their political allies seek to undermine and silence the will and voice of all voters in this state,” Benson said.
“But their efforts will not succeed,” he said in a statement. “The will of the people is clear.”
While many state officials have backed down, Republican members of Congress have for the most part remained silent in the face of Trump’s unsubstantiated claims that he won the election.
The 78-year-old Biden has largely ignored Trump’s refusal to concede, calling it “embarrassing,” but is moving forward with his cabinet formation and plans for his inauguration on January 20, 2021.
