In Harsh Rebuke, Appeals Court Rejects Trump’s
Election Challenge in Pennsylvania
“Voters, not lawyers, choose the president,” a judge
for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in the 21-page repudiation of Mr.
Trump’s legal effort to halt Pennsylvania’s certification process.
By Alan
Feuer
Nov. 27,
2020
In a
blistering decision, a Philadelphia appeals court ruled on Friday that the
Trump campaign could not stop — or attempt to reverse — the certification of
the voting results in Pennsylvania, reprimanding the president’s team by noting
that “calling an election unfair does not make it so.”
The 21-page
ruling by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals was a complete repudiation of Mr.
Trump’s legal effort to halt Pennsylvania’s certification process and was
written by a judge that he himself appointed to the bench. “Free, fair
elections are the lifeblood of our democracy,” Judge Stephanos Bibas wrote on
behalf of the appeals court in a unanimous decision. “Charges require specific
allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”
Many courts
have used scathing language in tossing out a relentless barrage of lawsuits
filed by the Trump campaign and its supporters since Election Day; but even so,
the Third Circuit’s ruling was particularly blunt.
“Voters,
not lawyers, choose the president,” the court declared at one point. “Ballots,
not briefs, decide elections.”
The court
accused the Trump campaign of engaging in “repetitive litigation” and pointed
out that the public interest strongly favored “counting every lawful voter’s
vote, and not disenfranchising millions of Pennsylvania voters who voted by
mail.”
Even though
Republican plaintiffs have continued filing lawsuits challenging the integrity
of the elections and Mr. Trump has not let up on baselessly questioning the
election results on Twitter, judges around the country — some of them appointed
by Republicans — have held the line, ruling over and over that the legal
actions in several swing states lack both merit and sufficient proof.
Last week,
a federal judge in Atlanta appointed by Mr. Trump denied an emergency request
to halt the certification of Georgia’s vote, saying that such a move “would
breed confusion and disenfranchisement that I find have no basis in fact and
law.”
Then there
was the judge whose ruling was upheld by the Third Circuit, Matthew W. Brann of
Federal District Court in Williamsport, Pa. When Judge Brann, a former
Republican official and member of the conservative Federalist Society appointed
by former President Barack Obama, dealt Mr. Trump’s team an initial legal
defeat last Saturday, he likened the suit to “Frankenstein’s monster,” saying
it had been “haphazardly stitched together.” He also noted that the suit was
filled with “strained legal arguments” and “speculative accusations” that were
“unsupported by evidence.”
The
Pennsylvania decision came on a day of baseless tweets from Mr. Trump that the
election was “a total scam,” that he “won by a lot” and that the news media
“refuse to report the real facts and figures.”
Still, when
asked on Thursday if he would leave the White House if the Electoral College,
as expected, formalizes Mr. Biden’s victory, the president said: “Certainly I
will.”
On Friday,
moments after the three-judge panel from the Third Circuit handed down its
ruling, Jenna Ellis, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, wrote on Twitter that she and
Rudolph W. Giuliani, who is leading the president’s postelection legal
campaign, planned to appeal to the Supreme Court. In her Twitter post, Ms.
Ellis accused “the activist judicial machinery in Pennsylvania” of covering up
“allegations of massive fraud” despite the fact that all three judges on the
panel were appointed by Republicans.
But even if
the Supreme Court granted the Trump campaign’s proposed request to reverse the
Third Circuit, it would not get much, given the narrow way in which the appeal
was structured.
Mr. Trump’s
lawyers had asked the appeals court only for permission to file a revised
version of its original complaint to Judge Brann. If the Supreme Court abided
by the strict terms of the appeal, it could do no more than return the case to
Judge Brann’s court for further action.
In a letter
to the Third Circuit earlier this week, lawyers for Mr. Trump had suggested
that the appeals court could, on its own, reverse the certification of
Pennsylvania’s vote, which took place on Tuesday when Gov. Tom Wolf signed off
on the slate of 20 electors and solidified President-elect Joseph R. Biden
Jr.’s victory there. Georgia certified its vote last week after a hand-recount
of its five million ballots left Mr. Biden’s victory intact. But Mr. Trump’s
lawyers stopped short of formally requesting such a move.
Still, the
appeals court shot down that suggestion too, saying the campaign’s arguments
for effectively undoing Pennsylvania’s election had “no merit” and would be
“drastic and unprecedented.”
“That
remedy would be grossly disproportionate to the procedural challenges raised,”
the judges wrote.
In the
initial complaint, the campaign’s lawyers had argued there were widespread
improprieties with mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania and that Mr. Trump’s poll
challengers were not allowed proper access to observe the vote and vote count.
But the
appeals court dismissed these arguments as “vague and conclusory.”
Mr. Trump’s
lawyers never alleged “that anyone treated the Trump campaign or Trump votes
worse than it treated the Biden campaign or Biden votes,” the court wrote. “And
federal law does not require poll watchers or specify how they may observe.”
The
underlying lawsuit has been beset by legal snafus almost from the moment it
began on Nov. 9.
One week
after it was filed, the Trump campaign was already on its third set of lawyers.
On Nov. 17, Mr. Giuliani, rushing into the matter, personally appeared at a
hearing in front of Judge Brann and gave a disjointed opening statement that
mentioned Mickey Mouse, former Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago and the
Philadelphia mafia.
Mr.
Giuliani also contradicted Mr. Trump — and his own public statements — by
admitting at the hearing that no one was accusing Pennsylvania elections
officials of committing fraud.
“This is
not a fraud case,” he said.
The appeals
court seemed to throw that statement back in Mr. Giuliani’s face in its
decision.
“The Trump
presidential campaign asserts that Pennsylvania’s 2020 election was unfair,” it
wrote. “But as lawyer Rudolph Giuliani stressed, the campaign ‘doesn’t plead
fraud.’”
Alan Feuer
covers courts and criminal justice for the Metro desk. He has written about
mobsters, jails, police misconduct, wrongful convictions, government corruption
and El Chapo, the jailed chief of the Sinaloa drug cartel. He joined The
Times in 1999. @alanfeuer
Joe Biden gains votes in Wisconsin county after
Trump-ordered recount
Milwaukee recount, which cost Trump campaign $3m,
boosts Democratic president-elect days before state must certify result
Staff and
agencies
Sat 28 Nov
2020 07.05 GMT
A recount
in Wisconsin’s largest county demanded by President Donald Trump’s election
campaign ended on Friday with the president-elect, Joe Biden, gaining votes.
After the
recount in Milwaukee county, Biden made a net gain of 132 votes, out of nearly
460,000 cast. Overall, the Democrat gained 257 votes to Trump’s 125.
Trump’s
campaign had demanded recounts in two of Wisconsin’s most populous and
Democratic-leaning counties, after he lost Wisconsin to Biden by more than
20,000 votes. The two recounts will cost the Trump campaign $3m. Dane county is
expected to finish its recount on Sunday.
Overall,
Biden won November’s US presidential election with 306 electoral college votes
to Trump’s 232. Biden also leads by more than 6m in the popular vote tally.
After the
recount ended, the Milwaukee county clerk, George Christenson, said: “The
recount demonstrates what we already know: that elections in Milwaukee county
are fair, transparent, accurate and secure.”
The Trump
campaign is still expected to mount a legal challenge to the overall result in
Wisconsin, but time is running out. The state is due to certify its
presidential result on Tuesday.
On Friday,
Trump’s legal team suffered yet another defeat when a federal appeals court in
Philadelphia rejected the campaign’s latest effort to challenge the state’s
election results.
Trump’s
lawyers said they would take the case to the supreme court despite the
Philadelphia judges’ assessment that the “campaign’s claims have no merit”.
Judge
Stephanos Bibas wrote for the three-judge panel: “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.”
Trump
continued to maintain without evidence that there was election fraud in the
state, tweeting early on Saturday: “The 1,126,940 votes were created out of
thin air. I won Pennsylvania by a lot, perhaps more than anyone will ever
know.”
Meanwhile,
Trump’s baseless claims of electoral fraud in Georgia are increasingly worrying
his own party. Republicans are concerned that the chaos caused by Trump’s
stance and his false comments on the conduct of the election in the key swing
state, which Biden won for the Democrats, could hinder his party’s efforts to
retain control of the Senate.
A runoff
for the state’s two Senate seats is scheduled for early January and if the
Democrats clinch both seats, it will give them control of the upper house as
well as the House of Representatives.
When asked
about his previous baseless claims of fraud in Georgia during a Thanksgiving
Day press conference, Trump said he was “very worried” about them, saying: “You
have a fraudulent system.” He then called the state’s Republican secretary of
state, Brad Raffensperger, who has defended the state’s election process, an
“enemy of the people”.
Such
attacks have Republicans worried as they seek to motivate Georgia voters to
come to the polls in January, volunteer for their Senate campaigns and –
perhaps most importantly of all – dig deep into their pockets to pay for the
unexpected runoff races.
In
particular Trump’s comments have spurred conspiracy theories that the state’s
electoral system is rigged and prompted some of his supporters to make calls
for a boycott of the coming vote – something that local Georgia Republicans
desperately do not want. “His demonization of Georgia’s entire electoral system
is hurting his party’s chances at keeping the Senate,” warned an article
published by Politico.
With Reuters and Associated Press
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