- The Pennsylvania Court of Appeal on Friday rejected the Trump campaign’s efforts to block a lower-level court’s decision that the campaign should not prevent the state from verifying its election results.
- Judge Stephanos Bibas, Trump’s appointee, who wrote the three-judge panel’s decision, did not finish the campaign’s dismissal of the appeal.
- “The allegations of injustice are serious. But calling the election unfair does not do that,” Bibas wrote. “The awards require concrete allegations and then evidence. He’s not here either.”
- “The Campaign’s claims have no merit,” he added.
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The Pennsylvania Court of Appeals on Friday strongly rejected the Trump campaign’s request to block a lower-level court’s decision that rejected the campaign’s efforts to prevent the state from verifying the election results.
With a 3-0 decision, the panel upheld the lower court’s verdict and dealt another blow to the Trump campaign’s faltering attempts to overthrow the results of the 2020 election that President Joe Biden won this month.
Namely, the judge who wrote the decision of the Court of Appeal, Stephanos Bibast, was appointed by President Donald Trump. The other two judges are also conservative; both were appointed to court by President George W. Bush.
“The allegations of injustice are serious. But calling the election unfair does not do that,” Bibas wrote. “The awards require concrete allegations and then evidence. He’s not here either.”
He added that “the campaign’s claims have no merit”.
The Trump campaign lawsuit in Pennsylvania is the biggest legal challenge for the 2020 election. In the case, the campaign sued seven Democratic counties over vague allegations of voter fraud and asked a judge to prevent the state from justifying its findings to Biden.
However, two examples of the case, identified by Trump’s legal team as evidence of voter fraud, did not occur in any of the counties he sued. Fayette and Luzerne occurred in the county, both of which voted overwhelmingly for Trump.
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s chief defense attorney, sued the Pennsylvania District Court for vague and unsubstantiated allegations of “widespread nationwide voter fraud” that was not supported by the campaign lawsuit. As a result, U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann dismissed the lawsuit, saying the effort was to deprive 7 million voters of their rights.
The campaign appealed Brann’s decision to the 3rd District Court of Appeals, which tore up the arguments of the president’s legal team on Friday.
Judge Giuliani, appointed by Trump, targets weak claims
Bibas singled out Giulian in particular, writing that although the former New York mayor claimed widespread voter fraud, the campaign lawsuit did not stop that claim.
“First, consider what you don’t claim: fraud,” Bibas wrote. “In fact, in his oral presentation to the district court, Rudolph Giuliani, the campaign’s lawyer, admitted that the campaign” does not allege fraud “… He reiterated:” If we had committed an alleged fraud, yes, but it is not a fraud. “”
The judge also upheld the district court’s decision to change the campaign’s application for the third time in the lawsuit after the first and second iterations had “fatal” errors.
Most of the allegations in the second version of the complaint are “due to state law issues,” Bibas wrote. But he said that “Pennsylvania law is willing to ignore a number of technical flaws.”
“It favors the counting of votes as long as there is no fraud,” he wrote. “In fact, the campaign has already sued and lost these issues in state courts.
“The campaign is trying to repackage these state law demands as unconstitutional discrimination,” he added. “Nevertheless, his claims are vague and convincing.”
Bibas pointed out that the Trump campaign “never claims that anyone would” treat him badly “or that Trump would vote” worse than the Biden campaign or the Biden votes. “
Moreover, he wrote, the amended complaint “says nothing about the cure of technical state errors in ballot papers.”
“All of these errors are fatal, and the proposed second amended complaint will not resolve them,” he said. “So the district court properly refused the amendment permission.”
Bibas hinted that the number of ballots “specifically challenged” by the campaign – a few hundred – would not significantly affect more than 81,000 votes for Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania. And he echoed Brann’s decision, writing that “millions of mail would be thrown out drastic and unprecedented, which would make all ballot papers independent of disenfranchisement of a vast constituency.”
Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, another lawyer on Trump’s legal team, said in a statement that “the Pennsylvania activist judicial machinery” is trying to “cover up allegations of massive fraud.”
“We are very grateful to have had the opportunity to present evidence and facts to the PA state legislature,” Giuliani and Ellis said. – Go to SCOTUS! – added with reference to the United States Supreme Court.
—Jenna Ellis (@JennaEllisEsq) November 27, 2020
