A hearing on the Trump campaign’s federal lawsuit seeking to prevent Pennsylvania officials from certifying the vote results remains on track for Tuesday after a judge quickly denied the campaign’s new lawyer’s request for a delay.
U. S. District Judge Matthew Brann told lawyers for Donald J. Trump for President Inc. and the counties and state election official it has sued that they must show up and “be prepared for argument and questioning” at the federal courthouse in Williamsport.
It also may feature Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and the president’s personal attorney, who filed Tuesday morning to represent Trump in the case. He has not entered an appearance in federal court since 1992, according to online court records. That was the year before he was elected mayor.
The Trump campaign wants to prevent certification of results that give President-elect Joe Biden the state’s 20 electoral votes, suing over election procedures that were not uniform across the state. Giuliani has promised a raft of lawsuits and to provide Trump with evidence of voter fraud in the drive to overturn the election result.
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat, has asked to have the lawsuit thrown out, calling its allegations in court filings “at best, garden-variety irregularities.”
Brann scheduled the hearing to discuss the campaign’s request for a temporary restraining order as well as the defendants’ request to have the case dismissed.[contentad widget=”427100″]
After Pittsburgh lawyers dropped out of representing Trump’s campaign on Friday, Philadelphia election lawyer Linda Kerns and two Texas lawyers also withdrew Monday.
Camp Hill lawyer Mark Scaringi, a losing candidate in the 2012 Republican U. S. Senate primary, notified the judge he was stepping in but did not get the delay he sought.
The Associated Press has declared Biden the winner of the presidential contest, but Trump has refused to concede and is blocking Biden’s efforts toward a smoother transition of power. With Georgia the only uncalled state, Biden has collected at least 290 electoral votes — just enough that overturning Pennsylvania’s result would not open an avenue to a second term for Trump.
Biden’s margin in Pennsylvania is now nearly 70,000 votes.
There is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, and experts say Trump’s various lawsuits have no chance of reversing the outcome in a single state, let alone the election. In fact, election officials from both political parties have stated publicly that the election went well, and international observers confirmed there were no serious irregularities.
The issues Trump’s campaign and its allies have pointed to are typical in every election: problems with signatures, secrecy envelopes and postal marks on mail-in ball…
That some counties let voters fix or “cure,” mail-in ballots while others in the same state didn’t is a legitimate due process & equal protection claim even if by itself it would not impact enough votes to alter the outcome of the election.https://t.co/7VLvsZHXgY
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) November 17, 2020
WBRE: Trump campaign lawsuit to be heard tomorrow in federal court in Williamsport, Pennsylvania
— Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) November 17, 2020