TRUMP SEEKS TO INTERVENE IN TEXAS ELECTION SUIT.
`THIS IS THE BIG ONE'
WASHINGTON • President Donald Trump on Wednesday vowed to intervene in a long-shot lawsuit by the state of Texas filed at the U.S. Supreme Court trying to throw out the voting results in four states he lost to president-elect Joe Biden as he seeks to undo the outcome of the election.
The Republican president, writing on Twitter, said: “We will be INTERVENING in the Texas (plus many other states) case. This is the big one. Our Country needs a victory!”
The lawsuit, announced on Tuesday by the Republican attorney general of Texas Ken Paxton, targeted the election battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump has claimed he won re-election and has made allegations of widespread voting fraud.
Trump provided no details on the nature of the intervention.
Officials from the four states at issue have called the lawsuit a reckless attack on democracy while legal experts gave it little chance to succeed.
Rebecca Green, a professor at William & Mary Law School in Virginia, said Texas did not have legal standing to challenge how other states handled the election.
“It is so outlandish. It is totally contrary to how our Constitution mandates that elections be run,” Green said. “The idea that a state could complain about another state's processes is just absurd.”
The lawsuit argues that changes made by the four states to voting procedures amid the coronavirus pandemic to expand mail-in voting were unlawful.
Texas asked the justices to immediately block the four states from using the results to appoint presidential electors to the Electoral College, essentially erasing the will of millions of voters.
The Texas case represents the latest in a series of longshot lawsuits brought by the Republican president's campaign and supporters to try to reverse his loss to Biden, who is due to take office on Jan. 20. Officials from Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin called the lawsuit a reckless attack on democracy.
Jonathan Adler, a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Ohio, said some of the conservative justices may vote to consider the lawsuit's arguments on the grounds that they need to hear “original jurisdiction” cases. But even those justices are still unlikely to go along with Paxton's effort to upend the election, Adler added.
Adler said it is possible Paxton brought the case in the hopes of getting a pardon from Trump. Paxton faces allegations in Texas of bribery and abuse of his office to benefit a political donor, according to local media.