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WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump and 17 US states on Wednesday (December 9) gave their support to a remote Texas lawsuit that seeks to reverse its electoral defeat by asking the US Supreme Court to dismiss the voting results in four states.
Trump, defeated by President-elect Joe Biden in the November 3 election, filed a motion in court asking all nine justices to allow him to step in and become a plaintiff in the lawsuit filed Tuesday by Republican-ruled Texas against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania. and Wisconsin.
If the justices allow Trump to join the lawsuit, it would create the extraordinary circumstance that a sitting US president asks the highest US court to rule that the millions of votes cast in the four states do not count. The Republican president lost to Biden in all four states on the electoral battlefield after winning them in the 2016 election.
Trump wrote on Twitter: “This is the most important. Our country needs a victory!”
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In a separate brief, attorneys from 17 states led by Republican Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt also urged justices to hear the case.
Election law experts have said that the Texas lawsuit has little chance of success and lacks legal merit.
The lawsuit, the latest in a series of election challenges filed by the Trump campaign and its supporters that have so far failed in numerous courts, was filed by Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas and an ally of the president.
In addition to Missouri, the states that joined Texas were: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia. All states were represented by Republican officials at the presentation. All but three of the states have Republican governors.
Trump has falsely claimed that he won the election and has made unsubstantiated allegations of widespread election fraud. Election officials at the state level have said they have found no evidence of such fraud.
Officials in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have called the lawsuit a reckless attack on democracy. It was filed directly with the Supreme Court rather than a lower court, as is allowed for certain interstate litigation.
The New York Times, citing an anonymous source familiar with the discussion, reported that Trump asked Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas to discuss the case if the Supreme Court agrees to hear him.
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“ZERO OPPORTUNITY”
“Both procedurally and substantively, it’s a disaster,” Justin Levitt, a professor of electoral law at Loyola Law School in California, said of the Texas lawsuit. “There is no possibility that the court will agree to take the case.”
The Texas lawsuit argued that changes made by the four states to voting procedures amid the coronavirus pandemic to expand voting by mail were illegal. Texas asked the Supreme Court to immediately block all four states from using the voting results to appoint presidential voters to the Electoral College.
Biden has amassed 306 electoral votes, far more than the 270 needed, compared to the 232 for Trump in the state-by-state Electoral College that determines the outcome of the election. The four states contribute 62 combined electoral votes to Biden’s total.
Texas also asked the Supreme Court to delay the December 14 date for Electoral College votes to be formally cast, a date set by law in 1887.
The conservative 6-3 majority of the Supreme Court includes three Trump-appointed justices. Before the election, Trump said he expected the Supreme Court to decide his outcome.
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Democrats and other critics have accused Trump of attempting to reduce public confidence in the integrity of the US elections and undermine democracy by attempting to subvert the will of the voters.
Trump’s court filing said the four states “conducted the elections in accordance with unauthorized rules,” adding that “it was not necessary for Plaintiff in Intervention (Trump) to prove that fraud occurred” for them to election results were discarded.
Trump filed his motion in his personal capacity, rather than through the US Department of Justice or his campaign.
Trump is represented by John Eastman, a conservative jurist who drew criticism for falsely questioning whether Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is eligible to serve as Vice President because her immigrant parents were born outside the United States.
