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Not a single accusation of fraud that the president-elect’s team has raised publicly so far has been substantiated by a court. Not even in decisive Pennsylvania.
Trump’s problem: The “evidence” presented by his lawyers does not deserve this label.
Photo: Carlos Barria (Reuters)
Judge Matthew Brann is a serious person and expects the people who act in his courtroom to be serious. So if, as Judge Bann wrote in a ruling on Saturday, President Donald Trump’s lawyers actually asked him to invalidate the Pennsylvania presidential election and thereby devalue the votes of nearly seven million voters, then “one I should think the plaintiffs came well armed with strong legal arguments and solid evidence. ‘
But, as Judge Brann said, “that didn’t happen.” Instead, Trump’s representatives had only presented “speculative arguments and speculative accusations.” Judge Brann ruled that the request to cancel the election results was rejected.
Known pattern
This is now a well-known pattern: Legal representatives of Trump or the Republican Party file lawsuits in states where election results were halfway there. They claim in press conferences that they have indisputable evidence of all kinds of scams and wrongdoing that have garnered a large number of votes for Democrat Joe Biden. Then, in court, they demand that the election result be not “certified”, that is, not declared official.
The plan behind this strategy: If the election results are not official, so that Biden’s victory is not officially established, perhaps state parliaments could determine the electoral men and women who formally elect the president in December. Whether parliaments even have this supposed right to elect their state representatives to the Electoral College is controversial among lawyers, but Trump continues to follow this path almost three weeks after the lost election.
Appealed against Pennsylvania ruling
Trump’s problem with this is that the “evidence” his lawyers present does not deserve the label. Not a single accusation of fraud that Trump’s allies have made public so far has been substantiated in court. So justices from Arizona to Michigan to Pennsylvania have thrown out Trump’s field lawsuits. The verdict in Pennsylvania was especially painful for Trumpt: The state that Biden won by more than 80,000 votes has 20 votes in the Electoral College. If Trump cannot successfully contest his defeat there and Biden’s victory is made official, the president-elect’s strange fight against this election is practically over.
Therefore, Trump’s lawyers have appealed against Brann’s sentence. He wants to take the case to the Constitutional Court of the United States as soon as possible. They expect more sympathy from the Supreme Court: Six of the nine justices there are from the conservative wing of the court. However, US District Judge Matthew Brann is also a Conservative and a Republican. Pat Toomey, the Republican United States Senator from Pennsylvania, used Brann’s verdict as an opportunity to distance himself from Trump, one of the few Republican MPs to do so.
Also in Georgia, the home secretary and governor, both Republicans and Trump supporters, declared the election results official on Friday. Biden won there by 12,000 votes. Trump’s campaign team has requested a second recount of the ballots, which, like the first, should hardly change the outcome.
Local politicians walk away
In Michigan, the responsible body will vote on the certification of Biden’s electoral victory this Monday. In a meeting at the White House on Friday, Trump urged Republican congressional leaders to ignore Biden’s lead of more than 150,000 votes and instead award all 16 state electoral votes to him, the loser. The willingness of local politicians to assist the president in this coup attempt was limited.
