The Trump campaign appears to have turned a corner this week after launching dozens of largely unsuccessful legal cases across the United States in the wake of the election.
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On Tuesday, Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas, filed a lawsuit before the United States Supreme Court to delay certifying results in four key swing states. The four swing states biden won were Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan. In his 154-page complaint, Paxton points out that four states that Biden won used COVID-19 to illegally change election rules, doubling the number of mail-in ballots, and that the results should be ruled unconstitutional.
Texas is one of the few states in the country that has not expanded its mail-in ballots because of the outbreak. Paxton argues that by making it easier for other states to vote under COVID-19, he is violating the Constitution’s equal protection clause and hurting Texas voters. In good faith or not, the net result of these unconstitutional acts is the same: in the four states in question, election security is reduced.
Trump tweeted praise for Paxton’s courage and talent.
On Wednesday, 17 state Republican attorneys general filed amici Curiae in the Supreme Court, not a party to the lawsuit, but in support of Texas Attorney General Paxton. Arizona’s attorney-general also issued a separate statement, with 18 states backing Paxton, compared with the 25 Republican attorneys-general in America.
But the group of 18 Republican attorneys general backed Texas’s suit for a direct reason: they were “forced.” Trump 8 retweeted a tweet from a Republican supporter, along with a list of 23 Republican attorneys general by name, state, and when their terms end, most of them in 2023, and even a few in 2021 and 2022, all under pressure for re-election.
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Mr Trump also made a special lunch at the White House today with Attorneys-general from several states, including Paxton.
Paxton also plans to run for governor of Texas in the future. Other Republican attorneys general also have their own political agendas, and if they choose not to side with Mr. Trump, they could face challenges seeking re-election or higher office in the future. The willingness of so many Republican politicians to publicly support Mr Trump’s legal case is a sign of how far he has come in the Republican party. Even if the effort fails, their loyalty to Mr. Trump will be their ticket to promotion.
Paxton and Trump in 2018
Of course, several Republican attorneys-general came out against it, including Georgia’s attorney General, Chris Carr, who bluntly said That Paxton had got the constitution, the law and the facts all wrong about Georgia. Josh Shaprio, Pennsylvania’s attorney-general, said Texas waited until now to file because all other political and legal efforts had failed.
‘I feel sorry for the people of Texas, because their taxes are being wasted on this embarrassing lawsuit,’ said Josh Kaul, the Defendant’s Democratic prosecutor in Wisconsin.
Michigan’s Attorney General Dana Nessel is even more furious about the Texas attorney general’s outrageous lawsuit. Nessel said it was one of the cruelest lawsuits he had ever seen in the United States, and that Texas had no right to deprive Michigan’s 5.5 million voters of their right to vote. Michigan’s election results have been certified, and challenges to the results have repeatedly failed in the courts. Texas can’t give an example of someone who shouldn’t have voted in Michigan.
The fighting spread to the Parliament
By the afternoon of The 10th, 106 members of the House of Representatives had signed a case in support of the Texas lawsuit.
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‘Our purpose is simple: to speak to the court about our serious concerns about the integrity of the electoral system,’ wrote Rep. Mike Johnson (R., La.), who initiated the congressional chorus. We are not filing independent prosecutions for specific fraud, we are merely saying that the Supreme Court should promptly and carefully examine the broad range of allegations and violations. For the most part, the 2020 election has been replete with unprecedented allegations of serious fraud and irregularities.
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Johnson versus Trump
After Johnson put out a call for Republicans to sign, Trump called him personally on The 9th to thank him for his efforts. Trump also said he was eager to see the final amicus curiae list signed.
The Democrats are no soft target: Karl Racine, Washington, DC’s attorney-general, led a joint statement of 22 state attorneys-general against the Texas suit. ‘I am confident that the Supreme Court of the United States will thoroughly and sincerely evaluate the legal merits of this case and find them completely untenable, both legally and in practice,’ the statement said. The Supreme Court would reject such a breach of the rule of law and try to overturn efforts to have valid and legitimate elections.
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Fox quoted Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig as saying that the Texas lawsuits were purely political posturing and that no attorney general would really believe they would win. As lawyers, they should never have signed such an action, but they are politicians, not lawyers. This is bad for American rule of law.
The embattled Paxton
While Paxton is helping Trump turn the election around, she is also trying to change her own destiny. Now he’s under FBI investigation for bribery and abuse of power. In this case, Paxton is not just doing Trump a favor, she’s doing herself a favor. After speaking with Her, Texas Republican consultant Bill Miller said Paxton was courting voters back home. All he is doing now is trying to change the negative news about himself.
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Paxton was charged with a felony during his six years as Texas’s attorney general, on one charge that he defrauded investors in a high-tech start-up before becoming the state’s top law enforcement official in 2015. If convicted, paxton could be sentenced to between five and 99 years in prison, ending his political career.
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And before the case was over, Paxton was sued again by one of his cronies! Seven of his top aides signed a letter in October accusing Paxton of abuse of power and bribery. The charges relate to Paxton’s relationship with a donor who donated $25,000 in 2018 and asked paxton to investigate an illegal FBI raid on his home.
Since the complaint, seven plaintiffs have resigned, taken leave of absence or been fired. Paxton denies any wrongdoing and has refused to resign.
Mr Trump has taken a different tack
Mr Trump’s goal is for the Supreme Court to take up the case and overturn the election. Mr Trump has done two things in response: first, he has filed a motion to intervene as a party to the case; Second, he asked Senator Ted Cruz of Texas to stand up for him in court as a lawyer.
But Mr Cruz is not Mr Giuliani. He is not a strong supporter of Mr Trump. (By the way, Giuliani, who was diagnosed with the coronet, was released from the hospital today.) Mr Cruz was Mr Trump’s bitter rival in the 2016 election. In that he put all kinds of negative labels on Trump: sick liars, narcissists, villains and so on.
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‘This man is a pathological liar who doesn’t know the difference between a truth and a lie,’ Mr. Cruz once said. ‘He’s acting like something out of a psychology textbook, saying everyone else is lying.’ Whatever lies Mr Trump tells, he believes them to be true. This man has no morals at all.
Trump, of course, is not to be outdone. You’re a liar!
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But yesterday, the two men put their differences behind them when Mr Trump called Mr Cruz to ask him to argue his case in court. Mr Cruz accepted his request.
The Texas lawsuit differs in one significant way from dozens of previous lawsuits alleging electoral fraud. Instead of using specific cases of electoral fraud as arguments, lawyers for both Texas and Mr. Trump have seized on the election process and the conduct of election officials, arguing that local election officials relaxed safeguards on ballots and made ballot fraud undetectable.
The goal of the Texas suit was to take four swing states won by Biden, appoint Republican delegates as electors and give Biden’s vote to Trump in the Electoral College; Or repudiate the electoral College vote altogether and let the House of Representatives decide the president.
The next administration will still be a Trump administration, Mr Trump said this week. He wants someone to come forward, such as a state legislator or a Supreme Court justice, to summon the courage to declare him a winner. Is there anyone in this country willing to do the right thing? Mr. Trump said he would wait and see. As of press time, the US Supreme Court has yet to decide whether to take up the case, just four days before the us Electoral College votes to confirm the final result of the election. Please be assured that the answer will soon be known.
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