The Philadelphia Court of Appeals ruled Friday that the Trump campaign could not stop – or attempt to reverse – verify the results of the Pennsylvania vote, scolding the president’s team, noting that “calling an election unfair does not do so.”
The 21-page judgment of the Third District Court of Appeals completely rejected Trump’s legal effort to stop the certification process in Pennsylvania, and was written by a judge he himself appointed to the bench. “Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy,” Judge Stephanos Bibas wrote unanimously on behalf of the Court of Appeal. “The awards require specific claims and then proof. He’s not here either.
Many courts have used sharp language to drop the ruthless barriers to lawsuits launched by the Trump campaign and its supporters since election day; but nevertheless the decision of the Third Circle was particularly dull.
“Voters, not lawyers, elect the president,” the court declared at one point. – Election ballots decide decisions, not short information.
The court accused the Trump campaign of “continuing in recurring litigation” and pointed out that the public interest strongly supported “counting the votes of all legitimate voters and not disenfranchising millions of Pennsylvania voters voting by mail”.
Despite the fact that Republican plaintiffs continued to sue the integrity of the election, and Mr. Trump did not ignore the unfounded questioning of the election results on Twitter, the country’s judges, some of whom were appointed by Republicans, held the line, ruling and that legal action in several booming states has no merit and sufficient evidence.
Last week, an Atlanta federal judge appointed by Mr Trump rejected an urgent request to stop justifying a vote in Georgia, saying such a move would “result in confusion and disenfranchisement that I believe has no factual and legal basis.”
Then there was the judge whose verdict was upheld by the third district, Matthew W. Brann, of the Williamsport Federal District Court in Penn. When Judge Brann, a former Republican official, a member of the Conservative Federalist Society appointed by former President Barack Obama, inflicted an initial legal defeat on Mr. Trump’s team last Saturday, he likened the lawsuit to “Frankenstein’s monster,” saying “it happened by accident”. concatenated. He also noted that the lawsuit was filled with “tense legal arguments” and “speculative allegations” that were “not supported by evidence”.
The Pennsylvania decision came one day with an unfounded tweet from Mr. Trump that the election was a “total scam”, that he “won a lot” and that the news media “refused to share real facts and data”.
Nevertheless, on Thursday, when asked if he would leave the White House if the Electoral College formalized Mr. Biden’s victory as expected, the president said, “I will definitely do it.”
On Friday, moments after the Third District three-judge panel delivered its verdict, Jenna Ellis, one of Trump’s attorneys, wrote on Twitter that she and Rudolph W. Giuliani, who led the president’s post-election campaign, planned to appeal to the Supreme Court. Benne Twitter post, Ms. Ellis accused “the activist judicial machinery in Pennsylvania” of exposing “allegations of massive fraud” despite the fact that all three judges on the board were appointed by Republicans.
But even if the Supreme Court were to grant the Trump campaign’s request to withdraw the third roundabout, it would not bring much result, given the meager structure of the appeal structure.
Trump’s attorneys only asked the appellate court for permission to file a revised version of his original complaint to Judge Brann. If the Supreme Court complies with the strict conditions of the appeal, all it can do is refer the case back to Judge Brann’s court for further action.
In a letter to the Third District earlier this week, Trump’s attorneys suggested that the appellate court could independently revoke the certificate of Pennsylvania’s vote, which took place Tuesday, when Governor Tom Wolf signed the slate. 20 elected and solidified elected president, Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory there. Georgia confirmed its vote last week after Mr. Biden’s victory was left untouched in a manual recount of his five million ballots. But Mr Trump’s lawyers have stopped formally requesting such a move.
Nevertheless, the appellate court also shot down this suggestion, saying the campaign’s arguments for the actual withdrawal of the Pennsylvania election were “not merits,” “drastic and unprecedented”.
“This remedy would be severely disproportionate to the procedural challenges raised,” the judges wrote.
In the first complaint, campaign lawyers argued that postal votes were widespread in Pennsylvania and that Mr. Trump’s pollsters were not given adequate access to the counting of votes and votes.
But the appellate court rejected those arguments as “vague and convincing”.
Mr. Trump’s attorneys have never claimed that “anyone handled the Trump campaign or Trump votes worse than that Biden campaign or Biden votes,” the court wrote. “And federal laws don’t prescribe pollsters and they don’t prescribe how they can be observed.”
The underlying lawsuit was accompanied by a legal snafus almost from the moment it began on November 9th.
A week after filing, the Trump campaign was already in the third group of lawyers. On November 17, Mr. Giuliani, embroiled in the case, appeared in person at a hearing before Judge Brann, giving a separate opening speech on Mickey Mouse, former Mayor of Chicago M. Richard Daley, and the Philadelphia Mafia.
Mr Giuliani also contradicted Trump and his own public statements by admitting at the trial that no one accused Pennsylvania election officials of committing fraud.
“This is not a case of fraud,” he said.
The Court of Appeal appeared to have thrown that statement back into Mr Giuliani’s face in its decision.
“Trump’s presidential campaign claims that Pennsylvania’s 2020 election was unfair,” he wrote. “But as lawyer Rudolph Giuliani emphasized, the campaign ‘does not allege fraud’.”
