US Supreme Court delivers Donald Trump another legal blow over election result
The Supreme Court has delivered what looks to be the fatal blow to Donald Trump’s hopes of overturning the election result.
The US Supreme Court has rejected a major bid by Donald Trump’s legal team to challenge the election result in Pennsylvania, dealing a likely fatal blow to his hopes of overturning Joe Biden’s victory.
The court’s move came as a legal deadline known as “Safe Harbour” day passed, prohibiting Congress from undoing the results of states that have already certified their results.
The combination of the Supreme Court ruling and the Safe Harbour deadline makes it all but impossible for the president to persuade courts to reverse the results of the November 3 poll.
The nation’s highest court made no comment as it refused a request by Republicans in Pennsylvania to block the certification of the state’s election results which had previously confirmed a Biden victory.
The decision was unanimous meaning none of the six conservative judges on the nine-member court dissented.
The state Supreme Court in Pennsylvania had previously rejected the same legal challenge.
The “safe harbour” deadline under federal law means that when Congress tallies the electoral votes on January 6, it must accept certified results that were submitted before the deadline.
All six states where the president has challenged the results – Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania – have certified their results, saying Mr Biden won.
Mr Trump’s legal team vowed they would keep fighting despite the safe harbour law.
“The ‘Safe Harbour Deadline’ is a statutory timeline that generally denotes the last day for states to certify election results,” Trump lawyers Rudolph Giuliani and Jenna Ellis said. “However, it is not unprecedented for election contests to last well beyond December 8.”
Both Mr Giuliani and Ms Ellis have tested positive for the coronavirus during the past week.
The electoral college will formally cast its votes on 14 December, ending Mr Trump’s unlikely legal quest.
Speaking at a coronavirus vaccine summit on Wednesday (AEDT) Mr Trump maintained that he had won the election.
“We’re going to have to see who the next administration is because we won in those swing states,” he said. “Hopefully the next administration will be the Trump administration.”
“We were rewarded with a victory. Now let’s see if somebody has the courage, whether it’s a legislator or legislators, or whether it’s a justice of the Supreme Court or a number of justices of the Supreme Court, let’s see if they have the courage to do what everybody in this country know is right,” he said before the Supreme Court rejected the Pennsylvania case.
Mr Trump said at the vaccine summit that the US was just “days away” from having the first “safe and effective vaccine” against Covid-19.
The Food and Drug Administration is expected to give emergency authorisation of the vaccine developed by drug giant Pfizer by the end of this week.
The move would make the US only the second western nation behind Britain to authorise the use of a vaccine.
“It will end the pandemic,” the President said. “People who aren’t necessarily fans of Donald Trump have said that this is one of the greatest miracles of any other age of medicine.”
Mr Trump said the vaccine would soon see the number of infections ‘skyrocket downwards.’
But Mr Trump’s own coronavirus task force delivered a more sobering assessment of the timeline, saying the viral spread would not fall sharply until ‘late Spring’ (June) because of the challenges of a mass roll-out.
“The current vaccine implementation will not substantially reduce viral spread, hospitalisations, or fatalities until the 100 million Americans with comorbidities can be fully immunised which will take until the late Spring,” the Taskforce said in a report.
Meanwhile the president-elect, Mr Biden, outlined a detailed plan to combat the virus when he takes office in January, including an order to wear masks on buses, trains and in federal buildings for the first 100 days.
Mr Biden also pledged to distribute at least 100 million vaccines during his first 100 days in office. He said that after vaccinating nursing home residents and health care workers, he would focus on ‘educators’ in an attempt to get schools back to face-to-face learning.
His comments came as total coronavirus infections in the US topped 15 million with 285,000 deaths.
Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia
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