President Donald J. Trump’s re-election campaign might have been dealt a heavy blow in a Pennsylvania court Saturday, but it picked itself back up Sunday and filed an appeal with the 3rd Circuit, signaling its intention to keep challenging the Keystone State’s vote count.
U.S. District Judge Matthew W. Brann issued a sharply-worded dismissal of the campaign’s case over the weekend, saying it was full of “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations” of unlawful voting practices.
The opinion was seen by many as a death knell for the Trump campaign’s efforts to forestall Pennsylvania officials from certifying the vote count as scheduled Monday and overturn the outcome of the presidential election.
But Judge Brann also refused to allow lawyers for the Trump campaign to revise their legal complaint against the state and submit a third version of it for consideration. That refusal is at the heart of Sunday’s appeal to the 3rd Circuit.
The Trump campaign is asking the appeals court to overrule Judge Brann and force him to accept and consider a new amended version of the lawsuit’s legal arguments and complaints and it wants it to do so quickly so it could preempt the vote certification.
If the new version of the complaint is found to “state valid claims” against the legitimacy of the vote count but can’t be considered before the count is certified, the appeal suggests it would seek “decertification.”
Originally, the Trump campaign’s lawsuit against Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar included various claims of unlawful voting practices, including inconsistent treatment of flawed mail-in ballots across the state’s 67 counties and denial of “meaningful” access to its poll watchers. The access issue, argued in the main lawsuit and related legal actions across the state, failed to gain traction and was rebuffed by several judges, including the state supreme court.
Prior to Judge Brann’s decisive ruling Saturday, the Trump campaign’s legal team underwent significant changes and at one point filed an amended version of its complaint that left out all reference to claims that Trump’s poll watchers were denied access to see all the votes being counted, especially in Philadelphia.
Days later, with some of the legal team left the case, Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, joined the effort as lead counsel and another new lawyer was hired; the new group wanted to backtrack and add the poll watcher access claims back to the complaint.
Judge Brann refused to allow the lawyers to change the complaint again on the grounds that doing so would “unduly delay resolution of the issues,” according to Politico.
Instead, Judge Brann granted Boockvar’s request to dismiss the case, and he did so with prejudice against the Trump campaign.
His ruling said the campaign’s legal arguments were meritless and claims of wrongdoing speculative, at best, with no evidence provided to back them up.
“In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state. Our people, laws, and institutions demand more,” Judge Brann wrote. “At bottom, Plaintiffs have failed to meet their burden to state a claim upon which relief may be granted.”
As of Monday morning, Pennsylvania’s Department of State was reporting president-elect Joseph R. Biden had received 81,205 more votes than Trump.
The Washington Post reported Saturday that Trump’s legal team at the time, still headed by Giuliani and including attorney Jenna Ellis, said they planned to appeal Judge Brann’s decision and “expected the case to reach the Supreme Court.”
While the Trump campaign case in Pennsylvania has had an active couple of weeks, so has the campaign’s legal team.
Are you a resident of Pennsylvania who voted in this year’s general election? Tell us about it in the comment section below.
The Trump Campaign Appeal is Donald J. Trump for President, et al. v. Kathy Boockvar, et al., Case No. 20-3371, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit.
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