Seventeen states on Wednesday threw their support behind an election challenge filed to the Supreme…
Washington Examiner Seventeen states on Wednesday threw their support behind an election challenge filed to the Supreme Court by Texas, as the high court moves toward wrapping up the dispute this week.
The case, in which Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton accused Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin of casting a “dark shadow of doubt over the outcome of the entire election,” attracted the attention of President Trump Wednesday, who tweeted his support of the challenge.
“We will be INTERVENING in the Texas (plus many other states) case,” Trump wrote. “This is the big one. Our Country needs a victory!”
Trump added that there is “massive evidence of widespread fraud in the four states” Paxton named. Members of Trump’s legal team did not respond to requests for comment on how the president plans to act.
In an amicus brief in support of Paxton, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt on Wednesday told the court that mail-in voting in the election greatly increased the “risk of fraud.”
“States have a strong interest in ensuring that the votes of their own citizens are not diluted by the unconstitutional administration of elections in other States,” he wrote, in a document alleging the four states that went for President-elect Joe Biden imperiled “election integrity and public confidence in elections.”
Schmitt’s brief was joined by 16 other states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia.
Trump’s supporters in Congress also rallied around his cause Wednesday. Louisiana Rep. Mike Johnson, who is lobbying House Republicans to join an amicus brief, said on Twitter that Trump called to thank him for the effort. Johnson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The case, which Texas filed late Monday night, is the latest in a series of last-ditch efforts from Trump supporters to question the election results. The court docketed it Tuesday and requested that legal representatives for the four states respond by Thursday afternoon. Texas will then have a chance to reply, and the court is expected to make a decision shortly afterward.
Respondents in the case denied the accusations. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel called Paxton’s filing “a publicity stunt, not a serious legal pleading.” The Georgia Attorney General’s office released a statement calling it “constitutionally, legally and factually wrong” about how the state ran elections.
The suit comes on the heels of the court’s rejection of a similar case launched by Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Mike Kelly, which argued that the state’s use of mail-in ballots was unconstitutional. The court refused Kelly an injunction against the election results on the same day as the so-called “safe harbor deadline,” the date after which the Supreme Court has previously indicated that it will not consider election disputes.
Still, lawyers in the Pennsylvania case said they are undeterred by the court’s decision. Greg Teufel, Kelly’s attorney, told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday that he is filing a writ of certiorari to the court “as soon as possible” to continue the fight.
Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, the two top members of Trump’s legal team, on Tuesday made a similar statement, vowing not to stop fighting Biden’s win until he is inaugurated in January.
