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U.S. President Donald Trump listens during a Football Freedom Medal for Retired Lou Holtz Ceremony in the Oval Office of the White House December 3, 2020, in Washington, DC.
Brendan Smialowski | AFP | Getty Images
The Wisconsin Supreme Court said Thursday it would not hear President Donald Trump’s latest legal attempt to challenge his loss to Joe Biden in the presidential election.
The Trump campaign lawsuit, which sought to strike down more than 221,000 votes in the state’s two most democratic counties, must first find its way to lower courts, the Wisconsin Supreme Court said in a decision 4-3.
As the Electoral College prepared to vote on December 14 – thereby securing victory for Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris – Trump’s campaign lawyers argued they had no time to pass through normal legal channels.
“In this case, there is not enough time to follow normal legal proceedings without the court immediately affirming its original competent authority,” the lawyers wrote in their petition, filed Tuesday.
Judge Brian Hagedorn wrote in an opinion concurring with the majority vote that “these actions should be filed in circuit court”.
“To follow this law is not to ignore our duty, as some of my colleagues suggest. It is to follow the law,” Hagedorn wrote.
“Even though this court has the constitutional power to hear the case immediately, the statutory text notwithstanding, the briefing reveals important factual disputes that are best handled by a circuit court.
The court’s chief justice, dissenting, said she agreed with asking the circuit court to conduct investigative hearings in the trial. But she added that she would prefer the lower court “to report back to us on its factual findings, and we would decide the important legal issues presented.”
Although the media had called for the Biden and Harris race weeks earlier, and although many key swing states have already certified that Democrats won their presidential elections, Trump refuses to concede.
He and his campaign are filing new lawsuits against various aspects of state presidential races, as part of the larger goal of overturning Biden’s national victory. Many cases filed by the legal team, which is led by Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, have already been dismissed out of court.
The most recent case, filed by Trump himself Wednesday night in U.S. District Court in Milwaukee, asks the court to rule that the electoral authority of the Wisconsin state legislature has been undermined, then calls for the matter be referred to this legislature so that it can decide to remedy the situation, in particular by “any impact on the attribution of presidential voters to the State of Wisconsin”.
In a 46-minute lie-filled video posted to Facebook on Wednesday night, Trump signaled that his end goal was legal efforts to reach the Supreme Court.
“This election has been a total disaster,” Trump said during the long election rant. “But we’re going to show it. And I hope the courts in particular, the Supreme Court of the United States will see it, and with respect, I hope they will do what’s right for our country.”
This is the latest news. Please come back for updates.
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