TRUMP LOOKS BEYOND LOSS IN HIGH COURT
President asks justices to let him join another lawsuit
President Donald Trump on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to let him join an improbable lawsuit challenging election results in Pennsylvania and other states that he lost, a day after the justices rejected a last-gasp bid to reverse Pennsylvania’s certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.
The high court has asked for responses by today. Out of the roughly 50 lawsuits filed around the country contesting the Nov. 3 vote, Trump has lost more than 35 and the others are pending, according to an Associated Press tally.
The suit from the Texas attorney general, Republican Ken Paxton, demands that the 62 total Electoral College votes in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin be invalidated. That’s enough, if set aside, to swing the election to Trump. Paxton’s suit repeats unsupported allegations about mail-in ballots and voting in the four battlegrounds.
Trump lawyer John Eastman wrote, “The fact that nearly half of the country believes the election was stolen should come as no surprise.” Biden won by more than 7 million votes and has a 306232 edge in the Electoral College vote.
“We will be INTERVENING in the Texas (plus many other states) case,” Trump said hours before the high court filing. “This is the big one. Our Country needs a victory!”
Legal experts dismissed Paxton’s filing as the latest and perhaps longest legal shot since Election Day, and officials in the four states sharply criticized Paxton. “I feel sorry for Texans that their tax dollars are being wasted on such a genuinely embarrassing lawsuit,” said Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat.
Seventeen states Trump won last month joined Texas in urging the court to take on the lawsuit less than a week before presidential electors gather in state capitals to formally choose Biden as the next president.
They are: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia.
The Supreme Court, without comment Tuesday, refused to call into question the certification process in Pennsylvania. Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, has certified Biden’s victory, and the state’s 20 electors are to meet Monday to cast their votes for the former vice president.
In any case, Biden won 306 electoral votes, so even if Pennsylvania’s results had been in doubt, he still would have more than the 270 electoral votes needed to become president.