Trump supporters ramping up protests Lawyers say challenges quixotic and undisciplined
PHOENIX: Backers of President Donald Trump ramped up demonstrations on Thursday night (yesterday evening NZ time) against an election they believe was rigged or being stolen, clashing with counterprotesters as vote counting continued in battleground states.
In Arizona, one of five United States battleground states where votes were still being counted in the tooclosetocall race between Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden, Trump supporters massed outside the Maricopa County Elections Department in Phoenix.
Some briefly chased a man who held up a sign depicting the president as a Nazi pig behind a stage where rightwing talkradio host Alex Jones was speaking.
Police intervened and broke up the altercation after the man and his small group of counterdemonstrators were surrounded by Trump activists, according to a journalist at the scene. There were no reports of injuries.
‘‘They are trying to steal the election but America knows what happened and it’s fighting back,’’ Jones told the throng of some 300 people. ‘‘1776 is the answer to 1984,’’ he said, an apparent reference to the US Declaration of Independence and the dystopian George Orwell novel.
Protests have been scattered, small and largely peaceful since Americans went to the polls on Wednesday.
Facebook Inc said it had taken down a rapidly growing group the social media site said proTrump activists had posted with violent rhetoric calling for ‘‘boots on the ground’’ to protect the integrity of the election.
Biden supporters have adopted the slogan ‘‘count every vote’’, saying a complete and accurate tabulation in the remaining battleground states would show the former vicepresident had won the 270 electoral votes needed to win.
Both sides held rallies in Philadelphia yesterday, where election staffers slowly counted thousands of mailin ballots that could decide Pennsylvania’s crucial 20 Electoral College votes.
Trump activists waved flags and carried signs saying: ‘‘Vote stops on Election Day’’ and ‘‘Sorry, polls are closed’’ as Biden supporters danced to music behind a barricade across the street.
‘‘We can’t allow the ballot counters to be intimidated,’’ said retired social worker Bob Posuney, a 70yearold Biden supporter wearing a ‘‘count every vote’’ Tshirt as Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On filled the air.
In Harrisburg, about 100 Trump supporters gathered at the Pennsylvania State Capitol Building.
In Milwaukee, 50 Trump supporters gathered in front of a city building where votes were being counted, blasting country music, waving flags and carrying message boards reading ‘‘Recount’’ and ‘‘Rigged’’.
Roughly a dozen counterprotesters arrived after an hour, shouting ‘‘Black lives matter’’ and ‘‘say their names’’, referring to the victims of police brutality.
Other counterprotesters threw eggs at the Trump supporters from a passing car. — Reuters
WASHINGTON: Veteran Republican attorneys who fought George W. Bush’s successful legal battle for the presidency in 2000 are steering clear of President Donald Trump’s court fights, unimpressed by a strategy they say is quixotic and undisciplined.
The Trump campaign is taking its election battle to court on multiple fronts, filing lawsuits to stop ballot counting in Michigan and Pennsylvania, challenging voteprocessing procedures in Georgia and Nevada, and calling for a recount in Wisconsin — all while encouraging an uninterrupted count in Arizona.
That aggressive, if disconnected strategy came as the president claimed without evidence that mailin ballots eating away at his chances of victory were illegitimate.
But as the Trump campaign mounted a slew of lawsuits, the major legal minds and firms that fuelled Bush’s victory in 2000 were staying on the sidelines — or even mocking Trump’s efforts.
The outcome of the presidential election in 2000 rested on the results in a single state, Florida, where Bush and the Democratic nominee, former vicepresident Al Gore, were separated by less than 2000 votes, prompting an automatic recount. A defect in some ballots, known as hanging chads, created further conflict over the state’s ballots.
‘‘It was entirely different from now, when there basically is no problem — and nobody looking at it legitimately, including a lot of Republicans, thinks there is a problem,’’ said Barry Richard, who was lead counsel in the courtroom in Florida for Bush in the 2000 case. ‘‘There’s no problem that’s a defect of the ballots, or that’s any kind of fraud. It’s kind of a manufactured issue.’’
Benjamin Ginsberg, national counsel for the Bush campaign in 2000 and 2004, said Trump’s legal strategy had been unusual and ‘‘remarkably innovative’’.
Don McGahn, who was appointed by Bush to the
Federal Election Commission in 2008 and later served as White House counsel in the Trump Administration, quipped that ‘‘you need a legal violation to go to court.’’ — TCA
Trump supporters briefly chased a man who held up a sign depicting the president as a Nazi pig behind a stage where rightwing talkradio host Alex Jones was speaking