Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin: Here's an Update on Team Trump's Lawsuits and Recounts
On Thursday, the campaign to reelect President Donald Trump gave reporters an update on the campaign’s lawsuits and recount requests across the country. Tim Murtaugh, the campaign’s communications director, urged patience and said the campaign has “a solid, comprehensive strategy that is tailored to the conditions on the ground in each state and according to the laws in each state.”
“Over 72 million people now have voted for President Trump, and those Americans deserve to know that this election was free, fair, safe, and secure,” Murtaugh said. He warned against the rush to “instant gratification” in reporting preliminary results that suggest Democrat Joe Biden has won the election, and said that Biden voters also deserve to have the election process scrutinized to root out fraud and abuse.
Murtaugh insisted that media outlets should not ignore “the very real evidence of irregularities” in the election process, including disturbing reports of “stacks of ballots being run through scanners multiple times” and election officials treating voters differently based on what county they live in.
Trump Campaign General Counsel Matt Morgan ran through the state of play in five of the key swing states.
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Pennsylvania
Morgan began by noting the campaign’s legal victory in Pennsylvania earlier on Thursday. “The secretary of state continues to play fast and loose with statutory dates and deadlines,” he alleged.
Commonwealth Court President Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt ruled that Pennsylvania Secretary Kathy Boockvar lacked the “statutory authority” to change election law days before the election. Leavitt ordered the county boards of elections not to count any ballots that had been segregated.
Last week, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito ordered Pennsylvania election officials to segregate those ballots that came in after 8 p.m. on Election Day.
It remains unclear exactly how many ballots would not be counted for this reason.
Leavitt’s order represented the latest in the Pennsylvania Republican Party’s litigation against Boockvar. The state’s GOP filed the initial lawsuit on July 10, 2020, and it reached the Supreme Court shortly before Election Day. a 4-4 order let a state Supreme Court decision stand, allowing officials to count mail-in ballots received up to three days after Election Day. The Trump campaign asked to join the case on November 4.
According to The Wall Street Journal, about 10,000 ballots arrived during the three days after Election Day, far below Biden’s lead of more than 45,000 votes.
Morgan also referenced a lawsuit the Trump campaign filed against Boockvar on Monday, accusing the secretary and county election officials of violating voters’ rights to equal protection by favoring some mail-in ballots over others and of violating the Constitution by usurping the state legislature’s authority on election law. The lawsuit laid out ten reasons to suspect Pennsylvania’s election results are “irredeemably compromised,” and asked the court to prevent Boockvar from prematurely certifying the results.
Hearings in this case have been scheduled for next week.
Morgan announced that the campaign had filed a motion for a preliminary injunction to allow the legal team “time to confirm our well-founded theory that Pennsylvania officials have counted thousands of invalid votes.” He also repeated the lawsuit’s claims that Boockvar and other election officials have prevented the Trump campaign’s poll watchers from observing the ballot-counting.
https://pjmedia.com/election/tyler-o-neil/2020/11/12/heres-an-update-on-the-trump-campaigns-lawsuits-and-recounts-in-swing-states-n1141242