President Donald Trump‘s post-election legal strategy has been to file lawsuits everywhere his team believes there are votes to be found or blocked and where Joe Biden is inching ahead – even if their push in one state contradicts what they are seeking in another.
The strategy gives Trump’s lawyers multiple avenues for challenges, with vote out in several battleground states that could ultimately hand Joe Biden the presidency – although Democratic officials say it is designed to drive a ‘false narrative’ to undermine the results.
The claims come even as election observers and media organizations reported an election process without major incidents.
‘All of the recent Biden claimed States will be legally challenged by us for Voter Fraud and State Election Fraud,’ Trump tweeted Thursday amid the nationwide blitz of court challenges. ‘Plenty of proof – just check out the Media. WE WILL WIN! America First!‘
Even if the efforts don’t prevail, they are already succeeding in slowing down the voting process, and Trump’s allies are using them to claim Trump has seized an ‘overwhelming victory’ among ‘verifiable’ ballots.
PENNSYLVANIA
Trump’s team of lawyers have filed lawsuits on multiple fronts – to try to stem the flow of presumably pro-Biden mail ballots into the system and to try to force greater access for observers so they presumably can challenge more individual ballots.
They scored an initial win Thursday morning, which former Florida Secretary of State Pam Bondi, a Trump backer, brandished at a press conference.
The ruling, by the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, reverses a decision by the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia. It lets Trumps observers ‘be permitted to observe all aspects of the canvassing process, within 6 feet, while adhering to all COVID-19 protocols, including wearing masks and maintaining social distancing.’
Trump touted the ‘Big legal win in Pennsylvania!‘ on Twitter.
But then the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania almost instantly struck it down when Democrats appealed.
The reason of the appeal did not concern over the watching itself, experts said, but because Democrats say Republicans accepted the rules on watching before they went into effect.
Conceding that the rules could be changed after they had been agreed would open the way to more rules being changed, they argue.
That is not the end of the road for the Trump campaign. The big battle, with a greater potential to affect the count, could come in an effort to challenge an earlier Supreme Court decision allowing the state to count mail-in ballots that come in three days after Election Day.
Conservative justices had indicated that it could get another hearing should these ballots that get counted later prove decisive.
But a decisive win by Biden with votes that came in before Election Day would undercut the need for the suit – and Biden was chipping away at Trump’s lead with hundreds of thousands of ballots outstanding.
Pennsylvania Democrats, mindful of potential challenges and alarmed by reports the Republican-controlled legislature might seek to intervene, have been segregating mail-ballots that come in later to prevent the state’s entire result from being thrown out.
Pennsylvania’s Attorney General blasted the move on Thursday.
‘That question is a question of state law,‘ he said, noting it was decided by the state supreme court. ‘It was decided that those ballots and they will be counted,‘ he told CNN.
‘We’re following the law here in Pennsylvania here. We’re counting these legal votes,’ he said.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson blasted the suit.
‘It does not have merit. It’s a frivolous lawsuit and it’s really an example of the type of misinformation designed to sow seeds of doubt among our voters about the integrity of our elections process,’ she told CBS.
‘They have been following every rule meticulously … doing so meticulously with people from both sides of the aisle looking on and working the process,’ she told the network. ‘It’s really designed to drive a false narrative that the process is anything other than open and completely secure,’ she said.
Earlier, Benson explained why Michigan’s mail-in ballots were coming in late.
‘You may be thinking, why are we still waiting to hear from Michigan and why are they still counting our ballots,’ Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson told CNN. ‘Well, for about 18 months election clerks and I called on the state legislature to update our laws to provide time for preprocessing of ballots … Now our legislature chose not to make that change to our laws, and here we are in Michigan where our counting process is continuing long after the polls have closed.’
She noted that in nearby Ohio, mail-in ballots did get counted early. This contributed to a mirror image of what happened in Michigan. Joe Biden seized an early lead among the initial count, only to watch Donald Trump seize a health 53 to 45 victory.
NEVADA
The Trump campaign is filing a lawsuit in Nevada claiming thousands of ‘illegal votes’ were cast by non-residents.
The suit comes as Biden’s lead there stood at fewer than 8,000 votes Thursday morning.
The Trump team is claiming there were ‘tens of thousands’ who voted in Nevada who are no longer state residents, Fox News reported.
If true, that would represent a massive fraud on a scale not seen in recent history – and would snatch away Biden’s lead if the charge was found to have merit.
Former Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell announced the suit at a press conference.
Grenell is a Trump loyalist and declassified information from the last days of the Obama administration beneficial to Trump during his acting role as DNI.
‘We are confident that when all legal votes are tallied — and only legal votes are tallied — President Trump will win the state of Nevada,’ Grenell said.
He was joined at his event by former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, American Conservative Union chair Matt Schlapp and state party chair Michael McDonald.
It was not immediately clear what if any evidence Trump’s team has marshaled about out-of-state votes. In fact he said, it was up to the county to provide evidence.
‘We are asking Clark County to give us answers,’ Grenell said. ‘We have to have a system where legal votes are cast.’
A suit also seeks to challenge the software used to verify signature identification on mail ballots.
‘People getting as many as 18 ballots to their homes. To date, we still have not been able to observe these signatures,’ said Laxalt, according to a local Fox affiliate.
Again, there was no direct evidence.
GEORGIA
Team Trump filed a challenge in Georgia over just 53 ballots, even as Trump’s lead hovered under 20,000 – with new count favoring Joe Biden coming in. The suit said the ballots came in after the deadline, but did not provide evidence.
According to a lawsuit, a Republican poll watcher ‘witnessed absentee ballots that had not been properly processed apparently mixed into a pile of absentee ballots that was already set to be tabulated. The proper chain of custody for the ballots was not followed.’
But the judge in the case threw it oiut.
The challenger said he observed absentee ballots being mixed into other ballots at a counting facility in Chatham, Georgia.
He said he a worker bring ‘a stack of ballots’ and put them on a table at a processing facility. He questioned a supervisor, who said the ballots were ‘not on the manifest’ and were placed in a crate along with previously identified ballots.
A Trump campaign lawsuit claimed the proper chain of custody was not followed for the group of votes.
‘Failing to ensure that absentee ballots received after the deadline are stored in a manner to ensure that such ballots are not inadvertently or intentionally counted, as required under Georgia law, harms the interests of the Trump Campaign and President,’ according to the filing.
The suit claims it could lead to the ‘dilution’ of legal votes cast for Trump.
The suit cites the ‘possible counting of absentee ballots arriving after 7 pm’ – the state deadline – but the observer did not say the ballots he observed came in after the deadline.
Chatham County Superior Court Judge James Bass dismissed the suit after a hearing Thursday morning, in the county that includes Savannah. But Trump’s lawyers could seek to appeal.
Winning in a courtroom is only part of the strategy. The suits lead to an air of chaos, allow time for more disputes to emerge, and delay the time when Joe Biden could declare victory if he should win it.
‘If in the federal courts now in Nevada, Pennsylvania Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona – if we can get a fair count of verifiable certifiable legal votes, president Trump will win those,’ former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon told Fox Business Network personality Maria Bartiromo Thursday.
‘Conservatives that have strict interpretation of the Constitution control the courts, including the Supreme Court. We control the state legislatures. We control the party delegations of the House of Representatives in Nancy Pelosi’s House,’ he said – indicating hopes of forcing the race to be decided through extraordinary means.
