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Supreme Court rejects Trump, Texas bid to overturn election results

By Greg Stohr | Bloomberg

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the bid by Texas and President Donald Trump to nullify the election results in four pivotal states in an abrupt order that could be the legal gravestone for his drive to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

The justices refused to let Texas file a lawsuit to challenge Biden’s wins in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin. The order clears those states to cast their votes for Biden in the Electoral College Monday.

“Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections,” the court said in a two-paragraph order.

No justice publicly dissented from that conclusion. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said they would have let Texas file the suit, noting that they have long maintained they think the Supreme Court has no choice but to allow a suit by one state against another. They said they were expressing no view on any other issue.

The decision ends a lawsuit hailed by Trump as “the big one,” and it decimates his oft-expressed dream of vindication at the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority and three justices he appointed. The third of those appointees, Amy Coney Barrett, was rushed through the Senate confirmation process with Trump saying her vote would be needed to resolve any election disputes.

Trump has spent months trying to shake the nation’s faith in the integrity of its voting systems, repeatedly claiming before Nov. 3 that the election would be rigged and then saying afterward it had been, without ever producing evidence to back up those claims in court.

Dozens of lower courts rejected cases pressed by Trump and his allies. Members of the Trump administration, including Attorney General Bill Barr, have said they haven’t found any instances of widespread fraud.

Texas, with Trump’s support, sought an extraordinary last-minute intervention by the high court. Texas claimed its rights were violated because the four states unconstitutionally expanded mail voting, opening up their elections to fraud and irregularities.

Also on Friday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments over the weekend on Trump’s state lawsuit seeking to disqualify more than 221,000 ballots and overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the battleground state.

The court’s decision to take the case, and to hear arguments on Saturday, came hours after a lower court judge ruled against Trump and said there was nothing illegal about the election or subsequent recount in the state’s two largest counties. The highly unusual Saturday arguments will come exactly 48 hours before Monday’s scheduled Electoral College vote.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court court previously refused to hear Trump’s state case before it went through the lower courts. A majority of justices have also openly questioned whether disqualifying the ballots, as Trump wants, would be appropriate.

But Trump is now getting a chance to argue the merits of the case before the court controlled 4-3 by conservatives.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

 


Source: Orange County Register

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