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Giuliani reveals Trump campaign is filing new Supreme Court bid to try to overturn election result

The campaign suggested the latest lawsuit would be followed by ‘action out of Georgia’

Justin Vallejo
New York
Wednesday 30 December 2020 08:18 GMT
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The Trump campaign has filed a new legal challenge in the US Supreme Court seeking to overturn election results in Wisconsin.

The move was announced by campaign lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who said the filing was aimed at the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s decision to reject their claims against more than 50,000 ballots. Joe Biden won Wisconsin by a margin of about 20,000 votes.

The Trump campaign says its petition will present claims that ballots were counted by voters without identification, incomplete absentee ballots were counted, and ballots were collected by hand at events held before the election.

Similar claims by the president and his surrogates in the past have not been backed by any proof. Lawsuits alleging fraud that “stole” the election from Mr Trump have been thrown out by courts across the US as his campaign has descended into incoherence and conspiracy.

The new case is the Trump campaign’s second filing in the Supreme Court after its challenge to the Pennsylvania election results on 20 December.

They also filed a motion for expedited consideration before the 6 January count of Electoral College votes that delivered the White House to president-elect Biden.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court tossed out the Trump campaign’s lawsuit on 14 December in a 4-3 ruling, with Justice Brian Hagedorn writing that the campaign waited too long to raise its concerns.

“Our laws allow the challenge flag to be thrown regarding various aspects of election administration,” Justice Hagedorn wrote. “The challenges raised by the Campaign in this case, however, come long after the last play or even the last game; the Campaign is challenging the rulebook adopted before the season began.”

Trump campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn said on an episode of Steve Bannon’s podcast that the filing came after a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision that was based on “technicality not the merits”, and that it would be followed by “action out of Georgia.”

“We are now taking that fight to the Supreme Court where there’s already a robust case out of Pennsylvania, and there’s a case out of Arizona,” he said. “There’s going to be action out of Georgia as well.”

While the Supreme Court took up a petition from the Trump campaign challenging election results in Pennsylvania, they set the date for the state’s response for 22 January – two days after Mr Biden is inaugurated as president.

The Supreme Court, meanwhile, threw out the legal challenge filed by Texas, and supported by the president, against election resutls in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin saying that the state did not have standing to bring the case.

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