'CHEAT BEAT GOES ON'
SCOTUS or not, ‘My mind will not change’
President Trump on Sunday said he would not change his mind that the 2020 election was rife with fraud and vowed to keep fighting — but acknowledged it will be difficult to get a case before the Supreme Court.
“My mind will not change in six months. There was tremendous cheating here,” Trump said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” in his first interview since the Nov. 3 election.
“If Republicans allow it to happen, you’ll never have another Republican elected in the history of this country, at a Senate level or at a presidential level.”
Trump’s legal team and Republican lawmakers have filed actions in a number of states, including Pennsylvania, in hopes of reversing the election results that show President-elect Joe Biden the winner.
During the 45-minute phone interview, Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo asked the president which cases would reach the Supreme Court, where Trump has three appointees presiding — Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
“Well, the problem is it’s hard to get into the Supreme Court. I’ve got the best Supreme Court advocates, lawyers, that want to argue the case if it gets there. But they said it’s very hard to get a case up there,” the president said.
“Can you imagine, Donald Trump, president of the United States, files a case. And I probably can’t get a case, even with — and we have tremendous proof. We have hundreds and hundreds of affidavits, sworn affidavits. And it’s very hard to get a case to the Supreme Court. That’s what everybody is fighting for,” he said.
Trump referred to a case in Pennsylvania brought by Republican Rep. Mike Kelly challenging the state’s mail-in voting law as unconstitutional and seeking to stop the state from certifying its election results. The state Supreme Court tossed the case on Saturday.
“I thought they had a great case, and it got thrown out the other day. Now they’ll appeal it. I hope to the [US] Supreme Court. They have a great case because the legislature didn’t make the decision on this stuff, and they have a great case. But you have to appeal it. The big thing is: Can you get it?” Trump said.
Pennsylvania finished its ballot count on Nov. 7, giving Biden the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House. He finished with 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232.
The president said he’s all in on the legal effort.
“I’m going to use 125 percent of my energy to do it,” Trump responded when Bartiromo asked how he planned to prove the allegations of fraud. “You need a judge that’s willing to hear a case. You need a Supreme Court that’s willing to make a real big decision.”
The president questioned “glitches” in electronic voting systems like Dominion in Georgia and “massive dumps” of mail-in ballots coming in on election night — and at one point even suggested the FBI and the Justice Department may have been in on it.
“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. This election was rigged,” he said.
The president expressed particular ire at judges who have rejected claims from his legal team, arguing that they have thousands of affidavits from people saying they were prevented from voting, but haven’t been able to present them in court.
“And they don’t want to take the affidavits, then they say we don’t have proof. I wanted to file one suit — Donald J. Trump, president of the United States — and put everything into one simple suit. And they say, ‘Sir, you don’t have standing.’ I say, I don’t understand. You mean as president of the United States, I don’t have standing. What kind of a court system is this?
“Seventy-nine percent of the Republicans think that the election was a fraud, and I hear 35, 40 percent of the Democrats. But they’re not going to put it down anyway because they’re not going to say we think it, but they all, I think, most of them think it was a fraud.”