Trump, allies turn up the pressure

Suit wants court to help overturn Biden’s victory

With his legal options dwindling and time running out before a key electoral college deadline, President Donald Trump on Thursday ramped up pressure on the Supreme

Court to help overturn Joe Biden's victory, gaining the support of more than 100 congressional Republicans in the unprecedented assault on the U.S. election system.

In a morning tweet, Trump called on the court to "save our Country from the greatest Election abuse in the history of the United States," repeating his baseless claims of widespread fraud. He had a private lunch at the White House with some of the attorneys general from 18 Republican-led states asking the court to dismiss the results in four swing states that Biden won.

By late afternoon, 106 GOP House members — a majority of the 196-member Republican caucus — had signed on to an amicus brief to support the Texas-led motion.

Democrats denounced the last-ditch legal effort - filed this week by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Trump supporter who attended the White House lunch — to negate 10.4 million votes in favor of Biden in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The appeal to the Supreme Court came days before the statutory deadline Monday for electoral college representatives in each state to vote on final certification of the results and send them to Congress for ratification early next month. The justices could decide as soon as Friday whether to accept the case.

But officials in the targeted states said any claims in the filings have already been dismissed in lower courts. In all, 20 states, along with the District of Columbia, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands, filed a motion calling on the high court to reject the Texas request.