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A federal judge on Saturday struck a blow to Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the presidential election, dismissing a lawsuit in Pennsylvania as shoddy, devoid of evidence and contrary to the US constitution.
The dismissal of the Trump campaign lawsuit, which had sought to block the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the battlefield state, was the latest loss in court for the president in his unprecedented effort to hold on to office. despite losing the elections.
The ruling prompted Pat Toomey, the Republican senator from Pennsylvania, to ask the president to grant in a statement Saturday night.
“President Trump has exhausted all plausible legal options to challenge the outcome of the presidential race in Pennsylvania,” Toomey said, explicitly adding that Biden had won the election, an admission that most Republicans have refused to make.
“President Trump should accept the outcome of the election and facilitate the presidential transition process,” added Toomey.
The dismissal of the case was ordered by Judge Matthew Brann, a conservative appointed by Barack Obama in 2012 on the recommendation of Toomey. Judge Brann wrote in a vilifying 37-page opinion that the Trump campaign had tried to disenfranchise nearly seven million voters in Pennsylvania, but had presented only “tense legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, without arguments in the operative complaint and without supporting evidence “.
“In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, much less of all voters in its sixth most populous state. Our people, laws and institutions demand more ”, he added.
Judge Brann dismissed the case with prejudice, which means that he cannot appear again. Trump’s campaign said it would appeal the ruling to the Third
Circuit Court of Appeals as part of a strategy to “quickly get
to the Supreme Court of the United States “.
“We hope the Third Circuit will be as kind as Judge Brann in deciding our appeal one way or another as quickly as possible,” said Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor representing Trump, and Jenna Ellis, a Trump campaign legal advisor.
The ruling came before Monday’s deadline for Pennsylvania counties to send their final certified vote totals to Kathy Boockvar, Pennsylvania’s secretary of state. The milestone is one of a series that will make Biden’s victory official.
On Friday, Georgia, which has a Republican governor and a secretary of state, confirmed Biden’s victory in the state, while two top Republican legislators in Michigan publicly rejected suggestions that they intervene to overturn Biden’s victory there. Michigan can certify its results on Monday.
The Trump campaign said Saturday that it had requested a recount in Georgia. Counting would be done by machine and the result is not expected to change. A recently completed manual recount in Georgia did not significantly alter Biden’s margin of victory.
Events have begun to undermine Republican support for Trump’s refusal to accept that he lost the election, although most Republican politicians have not acknowledged Biden’s victory.
On Friday, Liz Cheney, the No. 3 Republican in the House of Representatives, told Trump to fulfill his oath of office “respecting the sanctity of our electoral process” and said that he should present any evidence of massive voter fraud “immediately. ”.
The Trump campaign had sued Boockvar, Pennsylvania’s secretary of state, and several Democratic-controlled Pennsylvania counties earlier this month to prevent the state from certifying its results. They were joined by two individual voters who tried, but could not vote, in counties that were not the subject of the case. Judge Brann held a hearing Tuesday in which the Trump campaign was represented by Giuliani after two separate teams of attorneys withdrew from the case.
In his opinion on Saturday, the judge cited the “tortured procedural history” of the case, noting that “the plaintiffs have made multiple attempts to amend the allegations and have had attorneys show up and walk away within seventy-two hours” .
The Trump campaign lawsuit alleged that the guidance Ms. Boockvar had issued encouraging all counties to help voters correct errors on their ballots resulted in constitutional violations because it was followed primarily by counties run by Democrats rather than by Republicans.
Judge Brann dismissed the claim in his opinion, writing that “like Frankenstein’s monster” it had been “stitched up at random.”
It found that while individual voters had suffered injuries that would allow them to file a lawsuit, they sued the wrong counties and that blocking the Pennsylvania presidential election certification was the wrong remedy in any event.
Instead of asking for their votes to be counted, they seek to discredit dozens of other votes, but only for one race. This is simply not how the Constitution works, ”he wrote.
He said that the Trump campaign, by contrast, had no legitimacy to sue at all. Justice Brann wrote that Trump’s lawyers had not “clearly stated” any harm suffered by the campaign, and said that their “attempt to develop a legal theory” of the Supreme Court ruling in Bush v. Gore in 2000 was equally lacking. “They misunderstand the issues at stake in that case,” he wrote.
Michael Gwin, spokesman for the Biden campaign, said: “The judge’s ruling could not be clearer: Our people, laws and institutions demand more, and our country will not tolerate Trump’s attempt to reverse the results of an election he lost. decisively. “
