Trump’s legal strategy may be to block certification in key states

Donald Trump’s team may try to block certification in key states and get state GOP to appoint his supporters to Electoral College.

President Trump’s campaign is pursuing a patchwork of legal attacks in key states that have been called for President-elect Joe Biden to mount a long-shot effort to try to prevent officials from certifying the results, advisers and lawyers involved said.

Trump advisers have grown more vocal in conversations with Mr. Trump in recent days that they don’t see a path to victory, even if his legal efforts meet some success, a White House official said, though some advisers have continued to tell the president he still has a shot. An official said Mr. Trump understands that the fight isn’t winnable but characterised his feelings as: “Let me have the fight.”

One potential strategy discussed by Mr. Trump’s legal team would be attempting to get court orders to delay vote certification in critical states, potentially positioning Republican-controlled state legislatures to appoint pro-Trump electors who would swing the Electoral College in his favour, according to people familiar with the discussions.

It isn’t known how seriously the campaign has considered this idea, one of the people said.

Many of the advisers and lawyers said they doubt the effort would succeed and say it is aimed largely at appeasing Mr. Trump, who believes the election was stolen from him and expects his legal team to keep fighting.

Some of Mr. Trump’s advisers and lawyers said there isn’t an overarching legal theory or co-ordination behind the campaign’s efforts. The legal battle likely will conclude with Mr. Trump claiming the election was rigged against him and that he fought the outcome, the White House official said.

“I don’t think there’s really a coherent strategy,” said one Republican official.

The Trump campaign hasn’t presented evidence of widespread fraud in any of its legal claims.

Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said the main focus of the campaign’s legal effort is “to ensure that all legal votes are counted and all illegal votes are not, not just for this election but the integrity of all elections in the future, too.” Republican National Committee spokeswoman Mandi Merritt said there are “hundreds of reports of election irregularities across the country that deserve to be examined.”

A campaign official said the campaign is mounting a state-by-state legal program that employs different strategies depending on the state laws and vote-counting processes.

The Trump campaign has filed lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona asking judges to stop state officials from certifying the vote. A conservative legal group has made a similar request in Michigan state court, where a judge is expected to rule this week.

Denying Mr. Biden the 47 electoral votes in those three states would block his path to securing a majority. Mr. Biden leads by about 50,000 votes, or 0.75%, in Pennsylvania; by about 146,000 votes, or 2.6%, in Michigan; and by about 13,000 votes, or 0.4%, in Arizona.

Few courts have considered similar requests in the past, leaving few precedents. Legal experts say it is unlikely that judges would block finalising votes in a state unless evidence exists of widespread fraud.

The Trump campaign hasn’t offered any evidence of fraud in Arizona and Pennsylvania. In Michigan, it has offered affidavits from Republican election challengers who say they were harassed, forcibly excluded from absentee ballot-counting facilities and witnessed tampering with scores of ballots.

States use their popular vote for president to send a set number of electors to formally vote for president in the Electoral College. The Constitution says state legislatures shall determine how the electors are chosen, leading to speculation about what would happen with deadlocked results.

In Pennsylvania, the campaign’s lawsuit contends the state didn’t give observers enough access to ballot counters and gave voters in Democratic leaning counties more opportunities to correct deficiencies in their mail-in ballots.

Officials in each state have defended their voting processes as fair and free of major problems. Democrats said they would fight any effort to stop certification of the vote.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, said the Michigan lawsuits were aimed at preventing the state from certifying results in hopes that the Republican Legislature would send Congress electors for Mr. Trump. “We are prepared to combat that,” she said on a conference call Wednesday.

Asked about the Trump campaign’s attempts to delay certification in some states, Biden campaign general counsel Dana Remus said Tuesday: “They simply have no evidence, and to succeed in a lawsuit that will stop certification, there has to be evidence of a problem with the process.”

Trump supporters outside the Philadelphia Convention Centre as ballots were counted. Picture: AFP.

In Pennsylvania, government officials say the law doesn’t allow the Legislature to send up a pro-Trump set of electors.

In an October opinion article in a Pennsylvania newspaper, the GOP majority leaders of Pennsylvania’s state Senate and House said that the state Legislature “does not have and will not have a hand in choosing the state’s presidential electors or in deciding the outcome of the presidential election.”

A guy named Al Schmidt, a Philadelphia Commissioner and so-called Republican (RINO), is being used big time by the Fake News Media to explain how honest things were with respect to the Election in Philadelphia. He refuses to look at a mountain of corruption & dishonesty. We win!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 11, 2020

A spokeswoman for the office of Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, certifies the electors selected by the popular vote.

A spokeswoman for Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, said the office is confident it will certify election results on time. “Arizona’s courts have plenty of experience handling and expeditiously resolving election-related lawsuits within the very strict statutory deadlines,” said spokeswoman Sophia Solis.

Arizona is scheduled to certify its election results on Nov. 30. Michigan and Pennsylvania have deadlines of Nov. 23, under most circumstances.

The president’s own family has been divided over how intensely to pursue the legal challenges.

His sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have pushed to keep at it, people familiar with the discussions said. Jared Kushner, a senior White House adviser and the president’s son-in-law, called RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel on Monday to suggest the party apparatus get more involved, according to people familiar with the matter.

Some Trump advisers said there is confusion over who is leading the legal effort.

David Bossie, Mr. Trump’s 2016 deputy campaign manager, was tapped on Friday to lead the legal push but hasn’t taken a particularly visible role since testing positive for COVID-19 on Sunday. A campaign official said he has been involved via phone in the campaign’s senior staff meetings. Mr. Bossie didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The campaign held meetings on legal strategy on Sunday and Monday, drawing in various longtime Trump advisers, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) and White House counsel Pat Cipollone.

One person involved in the efforts said Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, has been in regular contact with lawyers on the ground in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Mr. Giuliani didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Republican leadership in Congress has supported Mr. Trump’s legal battle. Some advisers see the efforts as a way to keep the Trump base energised ahead of the run-off elections in Georgia in January that will determine control of the Senate.

The suits also offer Republicans a greater platform to draw attention to any potential voting irregularities. And they provide an opportunity for political payback by Mr. Trump, who has long complained that the special counsel investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia in the 2016 election was a way for his opponents to delegitimize his victory that year.

The Wall St Journal