President Trump Hits setback as Supreme Court Rejects Case Without Comment
The Republicans’ final bid to overturn Joe Biden’s presidential victory in Pennsylvania was immediately rejected by the Supreme Court. The court, without comment, refused to void the state’s mail-in ballots yesterday.
No justice registered a dissent, suggesting they may all have instantly turned Donald Trump’s plea down in a unanimous decision. This means Biden will officially be certified as the winner next week by the Electoral College, MailOnline reports.
It comes after President-elect Biden beat current President Donald Trump by more than 80,000 votes in Pennsylvania – a state Trump had won in 2016. Most of the mail-in ballots were submitted by Democrats. But Governor Tom Wolf has already certified Biden’s victory and the state’s 20 electors are set to meet on December 14 to cast their votes for Biden.
Trump’s campaign instantly sent out a text to supports saying: ‘Everything Pres. Trump has achieved is on the line on Jan 5’ – the day before Congress meets to confirm the Election College’s decision. That will now be Trump’s last chance to overturn the result, by somehow persuading Congress to void Biden’s victory in enough states to cut his Electoral College total to under 270.
If this happens, it will be up to the House to decide who is president, with each state delegation getting one vote. As the Republicans have a majority in 26 states, Trump thinks this might lead him to victory. But the Supreme Court’s rejection has not helped him, despite a 6-3 conservative majority and three Trump judges on the bench.
It came just hours after the state of Texas attempted to overturn the election results by suing four key states that Joe Biden won for the way elections were conducted. Then just before the ruling came down, Trump ranted he had ‘won’ in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia at a White House event, saying that he wanted Supreme Court justices to have ‘the courage’ to back him. But the case turned down by the justices was the only one to even make it to them.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court had already ruled against them in November.
At the time this action was filed on November 21, 2020, millions of Pennsylvania voters had already expressed their will in both the June 2020 primary election and the November 2020 general election,’ the state court ruled. ‘Petitioners failed to act with due diligence in presenting the instant claim.
Equally clear is the substantial prejudice arising from petitioners’ failure to institute promptly a facial challenge to the mail-in voting statutory scheme, as such inaction would result in the disenfranchisement of millions of Pennsylvania voters.’ That means Trump and his legal team failed to change a single state’s result, and only won a single case which affected less than 2,000 votes. Shortly after the Supreme Court’s decision, the House ignored a veto threat by Trump and voted overwhelmingly to pass a defence bill.
Trump wanted to change a communication law and objecting to renaming military bases named after Confederate officers, but the $741 billion bill passed on a bipartisan vote of 335-78.