Supreme Court Shuts Door to Trump Election Prospects: NPR

Texas State Attorney Ken Paxton, who was seen here with President Trump in June in Dallas, has filed a lawsuit against four states by Joe Biden in the general election, claiming that their changes to election procedures during the pandemic violated federal law.

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Nicholas Cam / AFP via Getty Images

Texas State Attorney Ken Paxton, who was seen here with President Trump in June in Dallas, has filed a lawsuit against four states by Joe Biden in the general election, claiming that their changes to election procedures during the pandemic violated federal law.

Nicholas Cam / AFP via Getty Images

The US Supreme Court on Friday night rejected the challenge at the eleventh hour to elect Joe Biden as president.

The court proceeding came with a one-page order, which he said was rejected for “incompetence.”

Texas, with Trump’s backing, has attempted to sue Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan, citing fraud, without evidence. But for a state to bring a case to court, especially the Supreme Court, the state must prove that it was injured. In substance, the court said Texas could not prove that it had been hit the way other states had conducted their elections.

The court wrote that “Texas has not demonstrated a judicially recognized interest in the way another country conducts its elections.”

Judge Samuel Alito, accompanied by Judge Clarence Thomas, wrote that in their view, the Court “has no discretion to refuse to present a complaint bill in a case within our original jurisdiction.”

But the two said that while they would have allowed the complaint to be lodged, they were not giving Trump or Texas any of the relief they requested.

Kevin McCarthy, the top Republican in the US House of Representatives, earlier in the day attached his name to 125 fellow Republicans in the House of Representatives who supported Trump’s long bid. McCarthy was the most prominent member of Congress to support the lawsuit.

On Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton lawsuit Four states where Biden was Certificate winnerGeorgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The lawsuit, filed directly in the Supreme Court, was classified as a “original” case, between one state and another.

Paxton claimed that the target states made changes to election procedures due to the pandemic that violated federal law. He claimed that the changes enabled voter fraud. He asked the Supreme Court to extend the deadline on December 14 for Electoral College voters to cast their votes in those four states, considering that more time is needed to allow the investigation of the election results.

Paxton’s lawsuit came in the face of repeated findings by state officials, including Republican officials in the state, that endorse the findings, as well as statements by US Attorney General William Barr that the Justice Department found no evidence of widespread fraud in this year’s election.

The Texas suit initiated a series of legal requests in the Supreme Court. Not only did President Trump seek to join the Texas suit, but 17 other states did – Trump won by an overwhelming majority. More support will follow, including a briefing by a majority of the Republican party in the US House of Representatives.

Late on Thursday, the four target states responded to the briefs filed in the Supreme Court.

“Texas is calling for this court to overthrow the votes of the American people and choose the next president of the United States,” wrote Georgia Attorney Christopher Carr, president of the Republican Attorneys General’s Association. “This Faustian call must be firmly rejected,” he said.

“Georgia has done what the constitution allows it to do,” the state brief said. It “carried out election operations, administered the elections in the face of the logistical challenges caused by the Covid-19 virus, confirmed and validated the election results – time and time again. However, Texas sued Georgia anyway.”

Pennsylvania was equally scathing. “The court should not be bound by this seditious violation of the judicial process, and it must send a clear and unambiguous signal that this violation must not be repeated,” she said in her memo. Wisconsin said Texas’ bid “to cancel.” [Wisconsin’s] Cucumber [for president] Free from any legal basis or factual basis. ”

It was not clear how or why the Texas attorney general, Paxton, decided to carry Trump’s water in the case. Especially since all four of the targeted states have Republican-controlled legislatures, and so far, lower-level state and federal courts, including judges appointed by Trump, have found the fraud allegations unfounded.

The unprecedented nature of the Paxton case, combined with the fact that the state’s chief appeals attorney, Kyle Hawkins, did not sign the Texas warrant as he would normally do, led to speculation that Paxton was seeking a pardon. He is currently facing a securities fraud indictment and is being investigated by the FBI over allegations of bribery and abuse of power.

Notwithstanding the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court in disputes between states, Such cases are rareAnd it is almost exclusively limited to disputes that other courts cannot handle, such as those related to borders or water rights.

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court rejected an attempt to prevent Pennsylvania from certifying its election results in Biden’s favor. Trump distanced himself from the legal strike and instead tied his wagon to the Texas suit, called “The condition everyone was waiting for.”

Trump has reportedly held talks with some Republican prosecutors who met this week in Washington, urging them to support the lawsuit in Texas. Several news organizations reported that Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, had agreed to represent Trump if the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.

However, initial reaction to the Texas lawsuit was dismissive at best. Republican Senator from Texas, Senator John Cornin, told CNN he was “frankly struggling[d] To understand the legal theory of the lawsuit, noting that electoral disputes in our system “are resolved at the state and local levels, not at the national level.”

The Texas suit had other problems. The first was the issue of legal status. Basically, how does Texas, or the acceding states, have a legal status to complain about the voting and vote counting procedures in other states?

Subsequently, the Texas lawsuit asked the Supreme Court to delay voting in four target states, but as Professor Edward Foley of Moritz Law School noted, the date of their votes is determined by federal law under the Constitution, which requires that today “will be the same in all Over the United States. “

The date chosen by Congress this year is December 14th.

Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine, described Paxton’s lawsuit as “dangerous garbage.”

“This is a press release masquerading as a lawsuit,” he wrote.

“It is too late for the Supreme Court to award compensation even if the allegations are meritorious (they are not),” he wrote.

Friday evening after the ruling, Hassan wrote that the fact that “courts across the country, with both Democratic and Republican judges, uphold the rule of law” is “something that is truly worth celebrating.”

Benjamin Ginsberg, a longtime Republican election law expert, told CNN on Wednesday that he doesn’t think “for a moment” the Supreme Court will look into the case.

However, with three Trump appointees on court, and a new strengthened 6-3 majority of conservative Republican appointed judges, the president apparently believes the Supreme Court will look at the case differently from that of “election experts”. He was wrong.

Except for unforeseen events, the result of the court action was that representatives of the Electoral College in each state would cast their ballots on Monday, and Joe Biden would formally become the president-elect, with just one step, in the House of Representatives where the Electoral College votes are ratified, before he is sworn in in January 20.