Trump Campaign Loses Pennsylvania Suit to Halt Certification

A federal judge in Pennsylvania threw out a lawsuit by President
Donald Trump’s campaign seeking to block certification of the
state’s election results, rejecting a request for an order that
would overturn the projected victory of President-elect Joe Biden,
Bloomberg reports.^[1]

The state’s motion to dismiss the campaign’s case was granted
Saturday by U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann in Williamsport,
Pennsylvania, freeing election officials to certify the results as
soon as Monday. Major media outlets have declared Biden the winner
of Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes with a lead of more than
80,000 votes.

“This court has been presented with strained legal arguments
without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative
complaint and unsupported by evidence,” the judge said. “In the
United States of America, this cannot justify the
disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of
its sixth most populated state.”

It’s the latest and perhaps highest-profile courtroom defeat for
Trump since the U.S. election Biden won by nearly 6 million
ballots. Suits filed by the campaign and its GOP allies have failed
in Michigan, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona as judges declined to toss
out millions of votes based on vague assertions by lawyers and
sworn affidavits from voters who interpreted every perceived
irregularity as evidence of a Democratic conspiracy.

Georgia certified its results on Friday and Michigan and
Pennsylvania are both likely to do so on Monday, leaving the
president an uncertain path to flip enough electoral votes to
reverse his defeat.

Pennsylvania, the largest of the six battleground states, was a
particular focus of the Trump campaign’s legal challenges, with
suits filed in both state and federal courts. The Trump campaign
has suggested it will appeal, and the president’s lawyer, Rudy
Giuliani, has said he sees the case as a “vehicle” to get the U.S.
Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority to decide the
election.

Giuliani personally argued against the state’s motion to dismiss
before Brann on Tuesday, making wild claims at the hearing of a
vast Democratic conspiracy to steal the election.

Read More: Trump Says He Has Until Dec. 8 to ‘Decertify’
Pennsylvania Loss

Giuliani and other campaign lawyers made even more outlandish
accusations at a press conference two days later, describing a
scheme involving child voters, dead voters and secretive overseas
ballot tabulation directed by George Soros and “communist money”
from Venezuela and Cuba.

But the actual claims in the campaign’s lawsuit were always
narrower than its public allegations. The suit’s most consistent
claim was that certain Democratic-led counties in the state had
more lenient rules in accepting “defective” ballots or letting
voters “cure” such ballots than Republican-led ones, which the
campaign claimed violated the Constitution’s due process and equal
protection guarantees. The state denied those claims and also said
the campaign’s proposed remedy of disenfranchising tens of
thousands of voters was implausible.

Pressed by Brann on Tuesday if he was actually alleging voter
fraud, Giuliani acknowledged that he was not.

Improper Oversight
The campaign has also suggested that hundreds of thousands of
ballots in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh should be invalidated
because they were allegedly counted without proper oversight by
Republican observers, exposing them to potential fraud. Claims tied
to such allegations were left out of an amended complaint filed on
Sunday but partially reinstated in a second revised complaint filed
on Wednesday.

Monday is the deadline for Pennsylvania counties to certify
their results, and Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar is expected to
certify shortly thereafter.

Boockvar, a Democrat, and Pennsylvania county officials argued
GOP observers were present while all ballots were canvassed, and
that the pre-election “cure” of some ballot deficiencies was
allowed under state law.

The second amended complaint also added a proposal that Brann
declare the entire Pennsylvania vote “defective” and let the
Republican-controlled state legislature decide the election in
favor of Trump.

A federal judge in Pennsylvania threw out a lawsuit by President
Donald Trump’s campaign seeking to block certification of the
state’s election results, rejecting a request for an order that
would overturn the projected victory of President-elect Joe Biden,
Bloomberg reports.^[1]

The state’s motion to dismiss the campaign’s case was granted
Saturday by U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann in Williamsport,
Pennsylvania, freeing election officials to certify the results as
soon as Monday. Major media outlets have declared Biden the winner
of Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes with a lead of more than
80,000 votes.

“This court has been presented with strained legal arguments
without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative
complaint and unsupported by evidence,” the judge said. “In the
United States of America, this cannot justify the
disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of
its sixth most populated state.”

It’s the latest and perhaps highest-profile courtroom defeat for
Trump since the U.S. election Biden won by nearly 6 million
ballots. Suits filed by the campaign and its GOP allies have failed
in Michigan, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona as judges declined to toss
out millions of votes based on vague assertions by lawyers and
sworn affidavits from voters who interpreted every perceived
irregularity as evidence of a Democratic conspiracy.

Georgia certified its results on Friday and Michigan and
Pennsylvania are both likely to do so on Monday, leaving the
president an uncertain path to flip enough electoral votes to
reverse his defeat.

Pennsylvania, the largest of the six battleground states, was a
particular focus of the Trump campaign’s legal challenges, with
suits filed in both state and federal courts. The Trump campaign
has suggested it will appeal, and the president’s lawyer, Rudy
Giuliani, has said he sees the case as a “vehicle” to get the U.S.
Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority to decide the
election.

Giuliani personally argued against the state’s motion to dismiss
before Brann on Tuesday, making wild claims at the hearing of a
vast Democratic conspiracy to steal the election.

Read More: Trump Says He Has Until Dec. 8 to ‘Decertify’
Pennsylvania Loss

Giuliani and other campaign lawyers made even more outlandish
accusations at a press conference two days later, describing a
scheme involving child voters, dead voters and secretive overseas
ballot tabulation directed by George Soros and “communist money”
from Venezuela and Cuba.

But the actual claims in the campaign’s lawsuit were always
narrower than its public allegations. The suit’s most consistent
claim was that certain Democratic-led counties in the state had
more lenient rules in accepting “defective” ballots or letting
voters “cure” such ballots than Republican-led ones, which the
campaign claimed violated the Constitution’s due process and equal
protection guarantees. The state denied those claims and also said
the campaign’s proposed remedy of disenfranchising tens of
thousands of voters was implausible.

Pressed by Brann on Tuesday if he was actually alleging voter
fraud, Giuliani acknowledged that he was not.

Improper Oversight
The campaign has also suggested that hundreds of thousands of
ballots in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh should be invalidated
because they were allegedly counted without proper oversight by
Republican observers, exposing them to potential fraud. Claims tied
to such allegations were left out of an amended complaint filed on
Sunday but partially reinstated in a second revised complaint filed
on Wednesday.

Monday is the deadline for Pennsylvania counties to certify
their results, and Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar is expected to
certify shortly thereafter.

Boockvar, a Democrat, and Pennsylvania county officials argued
GOP observers were present while all ballots were canvassed, and
that the pre-election “cure” of some ballot deficiencies was
allowed under state law.

The second amended complaint also added a proposal that Brann
declare the entire Pennsylvania vote “defective” and let the
Republican-controlled state legislature decide the election in
favor of Trump.