[ad_1]
(CNN) – The Trump campaign and President Donald Trump filled this Thursday with tweets and press conferences boasting success in court as states continue to count ballots, but legal efforts repeatedly failed to gain traction or influence enough numbers. of votes, if any, in key states.
Many of the active cases have focused on Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, in particular, where vote counters throughout the day continued to count the number of absentee ballots that dramatically reduced Trump’s lead in the state.
Trump’s few wins in court have largely been due to procedural actions on issues that could affect a miniscule number of ballots, or as in a Pennsylvania case, on relatively irrelevant issues such as allowing campaign observers to get a little closer. ‘to the ballot processors. In various courts in recent days, judges have been exasperated by the Trump campaign and the arguments of the Republicans.
The Pennsylvania court case
In one Trump campaign case filed in federal court in Pennsylvania on Thursday, George W. Bush-appointed judge Paul Diamond set the tone almost immediately with sarcasm, telling the Trump campaign attorney, “Well, you have your audience .
By the end of the hearing, Trump’s campaign attorney had admitted, contrary to his initial complaint, that campaign watchers were in the room to see the ballot count in Philadelphia.
The judge asked Philadelphia city officials to confirm that Democrats and Republicans were treated fairly for observing the ballot count and that they were allowed to see the count in the city from a distance of 2 meters. He noted that the case appeared to be an appeal from a state matter, making it completely out of the question for the federal court to handle.
When Trump’s campaign attorney spoke up to say he had “another problem” with the ballot observation, Diamond, the judge, interrupted him and asked, “Long and wide? Time and place?” .
When the judge insisted on Trump’s campaign attorney on the presence of observers in the campaign room, attorney Jerome Marcus said, “There are a non-zero number of people in the room.”
At another time, when Marcus handed the judge a hand-drawn map of the room for counting the votes, Diamond said the lawyer should keep his daily job.
It wasn’t the first map sketch presented this week. In a Nevada Supreme Court case filed on election day, attorneys representing Trump’s campaign presented a hand-drawn map of a voting processing room as evidence, an unusual approach in any case. .
Election requests made on election day often have an informal air, given the need for swift action. But several electoral law experts have criticized the lack of serious legal arguments Trump’s campaign representatives have been advancing in recent days, with some court documents not even containing evidence or statements of fact.
The judges dismiss other cases in court
In other states where voting was still closed, judges quickly filed new cases of Trump or the Republicans on Thursday.
Georgia Judge James F. Bass on Thursday filed a lawsuit filed yesterday by state Republicans to prevent “illegal post-ballot recount” in Savannah after a party poll watcher allegedly saw the blank absentee ballot papers. mixed with absentee ballots that had to be tabulated.
And in Michigan, a state court judge on Thursday filed a lawsuit filed by the Trump campaign calling for immediate arrest of the count until their representatives had “meaningful” access to counting and judging votes.
Judge Cynthia Stephens was very skeptical during the virtual hearing about the lack of admissible evidence in the case and whether the campaign was suing the right party, the Secretary of State.
“What I have is, at best, an affidavit for hearsay that it faces damage that would be significant,” said Stephens. “We have an affidavit that is not first hand knowledge.”
She said she is not convinced that Trump’s campaign claims could succeed in court.
Source link
