A federal judge on Saturday dismissed a lawsuit critical to President Donald Trump’s long-shot bid to overturn his Nov. 3 election loss to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden, calling his legal claim a “Frankenstein’s Monster.”
The Trump campaign had sought to prevent state officials from certifying the results of the election in the state.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, described the case as “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations.”
Brann said that he “has no authority to take away the right to vote of even a single person, let alone millions of citizens.”
The lawsuit before Brann was filed on Nov. 9 and had alleged inconsistent treatment by county election officials of mail-in ballots. Some counties notified voters that they could fix minor defects such as missing “secrecy envelopes” while others did not.
“This claim, like Frankenstein’s Monster, has been haphazardly stitched together,” wrote Brann.
Brann, nominated by former President Barack Obama, is a Republican and, according to his biography, a member of the Federalist Society, a group of conservative and libertarian lawyers, law students and scholars.
Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani said in a statement he was disappointed with the ruling and will appeal. “Today’s decision turns out to help us in our strategy to get expeditiously to the U.S. Supreme Court,” he said.
The campaign will ask the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia to review the ruling on an accelerated timetable, according to Giuliani. A majority of that circuit’s judges were nominated by Republican presidents. Four were nominated by Trump.
In the Pennsylvania case, Brann also denied a campaign request to amend the suit to claim violations of the U.S. Constitution. The campaign wanted Brann to allow Pennsylvania’s Republican-controlled state legislature to appoint electors who would back for Trump at the Electoral College vote on Dec. 14.
Under Pennsylvania law, the candidate who wins the popular vote in the state gets all the state’s electoral votes.
A presidential candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win the election, and Biden leads in the electoral vote count by 306-232.
Electoral votes are allocated among the 50 states and the District of Columbia based roughly on population.
Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Additional reporting by Raphael Satter and Aram Roston; Editing by Daniel Wallis, Dan Grebler, Noeleen Walder and Lincoln Feast.
Source: Reuters
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