Trump admits he faces uphill battle to have defeat overturned
:: US president says he still hopes for Supreme Court intervention
DONALD TRUMP has admitted he faces an uphill struggle to persuade the Supreme Court to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden in the presidential election.
In his first full interview since the November 3 vote, Mr Trump said it was “very hard” to get to the Supreme Court, albeit “that’s what everyone is fighting for”.
“I’ve got the best Supreme Court advocate that wants to argue the case if it gets there,” he told Maria Bartiromo, of Fox News, in an hourlong interview littered with more false claims about the election.
Nearly every case brought by the Trump campaign in a blizzard of legal action has been thrown out by federal and state judges – many appointed by Republican presidents – who have given his allegations of irregularities short shrift.
The president still hopes to reverse the result by persuading the Supreme Court to consider cases brought by his legal team, which has challenged the results in several battleground states.
But despite the Supreme Court now having a 6-3 conservative majority, legal experts believe that it will be
reluctant to become embroiled in the election.
With several important states due to certify their results shortly, the president refused to say when he would give up fighting his legal battles.
“I’m not going to set a date,” he said.
Mr Trump could scarcely contain his anger at the judiciary in the wake of more than 30 defeats in the courts. “We are trying to put the evidence in, but the judges won’t allow us to do it.”
For the sake of simplicity, Mr
Trump added, he would like his campaign to file what he described as “one big beautiful lawsuit”.
Despite having just over seven weeks left in office, the president added that he would consider appointing a special prosecutor to investigate what he repeatedly described as a “rigged election”.
Even the FBI and the Department of Justice could have been involved in the attempts to “rig” the election, Mr Trump added. “This is total fraud and how – the FBI and Department of Justice, I don’t know, maybe they’re involved – but how people are allowed to get away from this with this stuff is unbelievable,” he said.
The latest legal blow to the Trump campaign was in Pennsylvania on Friday, when the state’s Supreme Court overturned a ruling which had put the certification of the election results on hold.
Republicans had argued that the use of mail-in ballots was unconstitutional and should therefore be discounted, in a move which would have flipped Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral college votes from Mr Biden to Mr Trump.
The court said the case was filed months after the deadline for challenging the rules.
It added that the Republicans had failed to provide evidence of a single vote being cast illegally.
It was not only the courts that attracted Mr Trump’s ire. He also turned on Brian Kemp, the Republican governor of Georgia who, along with the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, had approved the rules for the election which Mr Biden won.
“The governor’s done nothing. He’s done absolutely nothing,” he said. “I’m ashamed that I endorsed him. But I look at what’s going on. It’s so terrible.”
Meanwhile, Mr Biden sprained a foot while playing with one of his dogs at the weekend but doctors found “no obvious fracture” while examining him.
Mr Biden suffered the injury on Saturday and visited a specialist in Newark, Delaware, for an examination yesterday.
According to Dr Kevin O’Connor, Mr Biden sustained a sprain of his right foot and while “initial X-rays are reassuring that there is no obvious fracture”, he had a CT scan for further review.
Leaving the doctor’s office, Mr Biden was visibly limping, though he walked without a crutch. At 78, Biden will be the oldest president when he’s inaugurated in January. (@ Daily Tel
egraph, London)