17 Republican Attorneys General Back Trump in
Far-Fetched Election Lawsuit
The move is an attempt to bolster a baseless legal
effort by Texas that seeks to delay certification of the presidential electors
in four battleground states that Mr. Trump lost.
Jeremy W.
PetersMaggie Haberman
By Jeremy
W. Peters and Maggie Haberman
Dec. 9,
2020
Despite dozens of judges and courts rejecting
challenges to the election, Republican attorneys general in 17 states on
Wednesday backed President Trump in his increasingly desperate and audacious
legal campaign to reverse the results.
The show of
support, in a brief filed with the Supreme Court, represented the latest
attempt by Trump loyalists to use the power of public office to come to his aid
as he continues to deny the reality of his loss with baseless claims of voter
fraud.
The move is
an effort to bolster a lawsuit filed on Tuesday by the pro-Trump attorney
general in Texas that seeks to delay the certification of the presidential
electors in four battleground states the president lost. Mr. Trump has been
holding out hope that the Supreme Court will hear the case and ultimately award
him a second term. Legal experts are skeptical, however, and have largely
dismissed it as a publicity stunt.
Late
Tuesday, the president asked Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Republican, if he
would be willing to argue the case, according to a person familiar with their
conversation. Mr. Cruz agreed, this person said. And the president has filed a
motion with the court to intervene, which would make him a party to the case.
The
willingness of so many Republican politicians to publicly involve themselves in
a legal campaign to invalidate the ballots of millions of Americans shows how
singular a figure Mr. Trump remains in the G.O.P. That these political allies
are also elected officials whose jobs involve enforcing laws, including voting
rights, underscores the extraordinary nature of the brief to the court. Even in
defeat — a reality that a significant number of Republicans refuse to accept,
polls show — allegiance to Mr. Trump is viewed as the ticket to higher office.
Mr. Cruz is
only the latest possible Republican presidential candidate in 2024 to express
support for Mr. Trump’s baseless allegations that the results of the election
are tainted and fraudulent — a claim that the president’s lawyers have been
unable yet to demonstrate in court. Indeed, in the president’s own motion in
the Texas case his lawyer sidestepped the idea that fraud was rampant, writing
that reporting in the media about the lack of proof “misses the point” because
the larger issue is whether state officials loosened ballot safeguards “so that
fraud becomes undetectable.”
Another
Republican senator with presidential ambition, Josh Hawley of Missouri, praised
the attorney general of his state on Wednesday, Eric Schmitt, after Mr. Schmitt
declared on Twitter that “Missouri is in the fight” for Mr. Trump. “Good work,”
Mr. Hawley wrote in response. Mr. Schmitt’s office took the lead state on the
brief filed with the Supreme Court on behalf of the other 16 states on
Wednesday, which argued that “serious concerns relating to election integrity
and public confidence in elections” have surfaced.
Republicans
familiar with the dynamics in these states — all of which Mr. Trump won —
described calculations of ambition and political survival that many party
officials are making as they choose to stand behind Mr. Trump. Some fear that
if they don’t make it clear they are on the president’s side they could open
themselves up to a primary challenge or end any hope for attaining higher
office in the near future. Some like Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general who
filed the lawsuit, are considering a run for governor.
Mr. Trump
has repeatedly tried to pressure Republican state legislators and elections
officials — who have the most influence over declaring the formal winner and
allocating electoral votes — to deny victory to President-elect Joseph R. Biden
Jr. They have largely resisted him. But in a sign of how Mr. Trump continues to
interfere with the process, he is hosting several Republican state attorneys
general at the White House on Thursday afternoon, according to two people
familiar with the plans.
Mr.
Paxton’s suit claims that voting irregularities in Georgia, Michigan,
Pennsylvania and Wisconsin should be investigated by the state legislatures
before those states formally certify Mr. Biden the winner on Monday.
After Mr.
Paxton filed, Republican attorneys general from across the country rushed to
declare themselves on board, posting their support on social media and issuing
statements that echoed the legally questionable claim in the Texas brief that its
citizens are harmed if elections in other states are not conducted properly.
The 17
states behind the amicus brief represent a majority of the 25 Republican
attorneys general across the country, and include Alabama, Florida, Kansas,
Missouri, Louisiana and South Dakota. Notably, the two Republican attorneys
general in the battleground states that Mr. Trump lost — Arizona and Georgia —
are not part of the brief.
Legal
experts and a handful of Republican elected officials have questioned the
seriousness of the suit, pointing out that states like Texas have no standing
to bring a case involving how another state awards its electoral votes.
Senator
John Cornyn, a Texas Republican and former attorney general of the state,
seemed baffled by the legal maneuver, calling it “extraordinary” and
“unprecedented.”
“I’ve never
seen something like this, so I don’t know what the Supreme Court’s going to
do,” he said in Washington on Wednesday.
And in
Georgia, the office of the Republican attorney general, Chris Carr, quickly
pushed back against Mr. Paxton’s lawsuit after it was filed. It issued a
statement saying that Mr. Paxton was “constitutionally, legally and factually
wrong about Georgia.”
Nicholas
Fandos and Alan Feuer contributed reporting
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