Court tosses Trump appeal in Pennsylvania
PHILADELPHIA — President Trump’s legal team suffered yet another defeat in court Friday as the federal appeals court in Philadelphia roundly rejected the campaign’s latest effort to challenge the state’s election results.
Trump’s lawyers vowed to appeal to the Supreme Court despite the judges’ categorical assessment that the “campaign’s claims have no merit.”
“Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here,” 3rd Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas wrote for the threejudge panel.
The case had been argued last week in a lower court by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who insisted during five hours of oral arguments that the 2020 presidential election had been marred by widespread fraud in Pennsylvania. However, Giuliani failed to offer any tangible proof.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann had said the campaign’s errorfilled complaint, “like Frankenstein’s Monster, has been haphazardly stitched together” and denied Giuliani the right to amend it for a second time.
The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals called that decision justified. The three judges on the panel were all appointed by Republican presidents. including Bibas, a former law professor appointed by Trump.
“Voters, not lawyers, choose the president. Ballots, not briefs, decide elections,” Bibas said in the opinion, which also denied the campaign’s request to stop the state from certifying its results, a demand he called “breathtaking.”
In fact, Pennsylvania officials certified their vote count Monday for Presidentelect Joe Biden, who defeated Trump by more than 80,000 votes in the state.
Ever since, Trump and his surrogates have attacked the election as flawed and filed a flurry of lawsuits to try to block the results in six battleground states. But they’ve found little sympathy from judges, nearly all of whom dismissed their complaints about the security of mailin ballots, which millions of people used to vote from home during the COVID19 pandemic.
On Thursday, Trump said the Nov. 3 election was still far from over. Yet he offered the clearest signal to date that he would leave the White House peaceably on Jan. 20 if the Electoral College formalizes Biden’s win. “Certainly I will,” Trump said.
On Friday, however, he continued to baselessly attack Detroit, Atlanta and other Democratic cities with large Black populations as the source of “massive voter fraud.”