Conn. lawyers drawn into fight

WASHINGTON — On Thursday morning a Pennsylvania judge overturned a lower court ruling and permitted observers for the campaign of President Donald Trump to stand closer to elections officials counting mailin ballots in Philadelphia.

The difference was a matter of feet. And yet Justin Clark,

Trump’s deputy campaign manager and senior counsel, a West Hartford native who’s coordinating the president’s multi-state legal attack, seized on it.

“I can’t stress enough how big of a victory this is,” Clark said Thursday. “We are going to continue to fight for access.”

With the presidential race down to the wire on Day 3, no detail is too small if it could influence the counting of ballots for Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden.

Clark oversees a barrage of lawsuits brought by the Trump campaign. Cases have arisen in Pennsylvania, as well as similar challenges in Michigan, Nevada and Georgia, along with a demand for a vote recount in Wisconsin.

The campaign is arguing for the counting of ballots to continue in some states and stop in others. In Nevada, USA Today reported Thursday, the campaign plans to file a case alleging that 10,000 voters cast a ballot despite no longer living in the state.

Several suits have already been dismissed and there’s no public indication that any have affected vote counts. There are likely more lawsuits to come.

Among the armies of lawyers engaging on both sides across the country, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., stand poised to get involved as well.

“I’m in close contact with the attorneys general in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada – we spoke today and there isn’t a day that goes by that either we don’t speak or our staffs don’t speak,” Tong said.

Each day attorneys general are swapping information about the Trump cases and other election cases, Tong said. He said he’s ready to assist the attorneys general in states under fire with their cases or file friend-of-thecourt briefs, depending how things develop.

“I haven’t seen a case yet that I think is a good case based on strong facts and a good claim,” Tong said. “A lot of the litigation that I’m aware of it either baseless or not well-founded and I think you’re seeing courts treat those cases that way.” But he added, if the Trump cases “get any legs they’re almost all threatening to election integrity and voter protection and designed to disenfranchise voters so that has a direct impact on our election system broadly and impacts Connecticut.”

Attorneys general from outside states can file amicus briefs arguing that a ruling in a particular case would impact election law in their own state, for example. They will not intervene directly in support of one candidate or another, but rulings in these cases could have positive or negative impacts on candidates’ campaigns.

Prior to the election, Tong participated in election litigation in several states. With other attorneys general, he filed a brief supporting Texas mailing absentee ballot applications to registered voters. He opposed certain requirements on how mail-in ballots must be handled in South Carolina and Mississippi and supported curb-side voting in Alabama.

In Minnesota and North Carolina, Tong supported the counting of absentee ballots received after Election Day as long as they were postmarked by Election Day, although in Connecticut all absentee ballots must be received by 8 p.m. on Election Day to count.

The Trump campaign continues to file challenges, and it’s still an open question whether the actions will identify and make the case for the hanging chad of 2020 — in other words, a ballot or procedural anomaly that could be used to invalidate votes and swing the results.

Looming large is the memory of the 2000 election in which a U.S. Supreme Court ruling settled the election between George W. Bush and Al Gore amid a dispute over partial markings and partially punched notches — hanging chads — on some Florida ballots.

The challenges now unfolding could have the effect of further delaying vote counting. On a political front, they could create the appearance of illegitimacy around the election for some voters even if the lawsuits are tossed out in court.

By Thursday afternoon, the campaign had already followed the Pennsylvania ruling on poll watching with a new motion for an injunction claiming county officials were now not letting their observers in to the counting center.

Bob Bauer, a top attorney for the Biden campaign, dismissed the flotilla of lawsuits as “meritless” and said allegations of fraud and systemic counting failures had no basis Thursday. He contended the lawsuits were mere vehicles to spread false messages about the election.

“All of this is intended to create a large cloud,” Bauer said in a media briefing. “We see through it, so will the court, so do election officials.”

Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Connecticut’s former attorney general, said he’s been in communication with Marc Elias, another Biden campaign lawyer. “They’re prepared for full-scale battle just because every one of them has to be taken seriously but they’re not going to change the outcome of the election.”

Blumenthal may file amicus briefs in support of Biden should the litigation, he said.

Trump has dispatched his son Eric Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani to Pennsylvania with former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Both campaigns are trying to raise cash to fund their legal battles.