Trump appeals Pennsylvania vote case to block Biden



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The Trump campaign’s appeal of his devastating loss in Pennsylvania federal court misspells the word “president” and butchers’ grammar.

The appeal filed Monday also does not ask an appeals court to overturn its defeat or temporarily block certification of the Pennsylvania counties votes, which are due later today.

Instead, the appeal to the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit is in fact asking to forgo its hitherto botched legal effort to invalidate enough votes in Pennsylvania to overturn a projected victory of the President-elect Joe Biden.

The campaign wants the appeals court to allow him to continue a second amended trial, which the lower court judge effectively prevented them from doing with his ruling on Saturday.

The appeal appears to be as long as the case on which it is based. But it could speed up what the Trump campaign says is its plan to get the case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The filing came a day after President Donald Trump’s two leading campaign advocates Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis effectively fired a third team member Sidney Powell after making bizarre statements that suggested the governor Georgia Republican and Secretary of State were part of a plot to rig the election there for Biden.

“Sidney Powell practices law on her own. She is not a member of Trump’s legal team. She is also not an attorney for the president in her personal capacity,” Giuliani and Ellis said, a week after that Trump bragged about Powell on Twitter. be part of the campaign’s legal team.

Giuliani appeared last week in U.S. District Court in Williamsport, Pa., Where he argued that Trump was the victim of fraudulent votes. He also said the trial of the campaign to block the certification of votes in the state did not alleviate fraud.

Giuliani said a claim in the original lawsuit was mistakenly deleted by other lawyers, and said it would be added back in a revised lawsuit.

On Saturday, the judge in the case, Matthew Brann, dismissed Giuliani’s argument in a scathing ruling comparing Trump’s campaign allegations to the “Frankenstein monster.”

Brann, a Republican appointed by President Barack Obama, said the campaign gave him “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, not substantiated in the operational complaint and not supported by evidence.”

In Brann’s appeal of ruling filed Monday, the campaign calls Trump “Presidential Donald J. Trump,” instead of “President Donald J. Trump” as one would normally in a court case.

This apparent slippage is contained in the line alleging that Democratic officials in Pennsylvania “engaged in an intentional ploy to count flawed ballots which they believed would favor Joseph Biden over President Donald J. Trump.”

Elsewhere in the dossier, campaign lawyers stress the importance of their assertion while undermining the rules of grammar: “This action is of national importance because of the consequences of faulty electoral processes on the election of the President of the United States. United in the Commonwealth could turn the election in favor of either candidate. “

Appeals typically ask appellate judges to overturn a decision of a lower court or, at a minimum, to request a so-called stay that would prevent the decision from taking effect.

In this case, Brann’s decision would allow Pennsylvania counties to certify his election results before Monday’s deadline. These results should confirm the victory of former Democratic Vice President Biden in the state.

But the Trump campaign is not asking Circuit 3 to uphold Brann’s decision, or even to overturn it.

Instead, the campaign asked the appeals court to consider a second review of the original trial in the case, which raises additional allegations about voting processes in the state.

“The complainants believe that the second amended complaint corrects all the shortcomings identified by the district court concerning: [among others things], standing, equal protection and remedy because his claims are very different from those “in the campaign’s first amended complaint, which Brann dismissed.

The appeal noted that the campaign is not waiving any allegation that Brann’s decision was badly decided, and offered to provide the appeals court with briefs to make such a claim if asked to do so.

The Trump campaign and its allies have lost or voluntarily withdrawn more than 30 state and federal court cases across the country as part of an effort to invalidate enough ballots, in enough places to effectively reverse the projected victory of Biden at the Electoral College.

Saturday’s loss in Pennsylvania and the two-day withdrawal from a federal lawsuit in Michigan made that effort even more unlikely than it already was.

Biden is expected to win 306 electoral votes, 36 more than is needed to win the White House.

In another pending case, Pennsylvania Republicans, including Rep. Mike Kelly, have filed a lawsuit in Commonwealth Court to try to prevent certain types of mail-in ballots from being included in the final tally of State.

The plaintiffs seek to block the certification of the election in the state, claiming that mail-in ballots cast under an allegedly “unconstitutional” law signed last year by Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat , cannot be counted.

The law, Bill 77, expanded the access of voters in Pennsylvania to vote by mail without excuse.

After the lawsuit was filed, observers were quick to point out that Bill 77 passed a GOP-controlled Pennsylvania state legislature in 2019 with overwhelming support.

“It’s kind of a hail Mary when time runs out,” Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor Jon Fetterman told KDKA, the Pittsburgh radio station.

“They are actively pursuing a Republican bill that would dismantle Republican control throughout our state,” Democrat Fetterman said.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Trump ally, on Sunday called the campaign’s legal team “national embarrassment,” saying lawyers failed to present evidence of widespread fraud which, according to them, had denied the re-election of Trump.

Christie is among a growing number of Republicans who say Trump should concede the election.

But the president refused to do so.

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