National: Trump’s options dwindle as safe harbor deadline looms | Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney/Politico

President Donald Trump’s effort to snatch a second term through a series of state and federal court challenges has been flaming out for weeks. Now, the calendar has all but extinguished it. Dec. 8 is the so-called “safe harbor” date for the presidential election, a milestone established in federal law for states to conclude any disputes over the results. Trump’s failure to gain traction in litigation, with his lawyers and allies failing to block crucial states from declaring Joe Biden the winner, means the safe harbor deadline stands as another potentially insurmountable reason for the courts to decline to intervene. Trump’s legal team publicly says the safe harbor deadline is meaningless and they’ll simply disregard it. Set by a 140-year-old statute, the date isn’t enshrined in the Constitution, they say. But the campaign’s legal filings tell another story, as Trump’s lawyers pressed courts for urgent action ahead of the deadline midnight on Tuesday and warned of irreparable consequences if they don’t. The last time a presidential election was resolved at the Supreme Court, the safe harbor deadline proved pivotal. And several legal actions seem to be hurtling toward a potential resolution on Tuesday — including a Pennsylvania dispute where Justice Samuel Alito initially asked for responses by Wednesday but decided to expedite further to Tuesday amid speculation about the safe harbor deadline.

Full Article: Trump’s options dwindle as safe harbor deadline looms – POLITICO

‘This Must Be Your First’ – Acting as if Trump is trying to stage a coup is the best way to ensure he won’t. | Zeynep Tufekci/The Atlantic

On the evening of September 11, 1980, my mom was approached by a neighbor who held rank in the Turkish military. He told her to stock up on bread and rice. “Oh, another coup,” she immediately groaned. The neighbor was aghast—he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone what was coming. But my mom, of course, had immediately understood what his advice must have meant. Turkey is the land of coups; this was neither the first nor the last coup it would face. A little more than two decades later, I walked up to a counter in Antalya Airport to tell a disbelieving airline employee that our flight would shortly be canceled because the tanks being reported in the streets of Istanbul meant that a coup attempt was under way. It must be a military exercise, she shrugged. Some routine transport of troops, perhaps? If so, I asked her, where is the prime minister? Why isn’t he on TV to tell us that? Another woman approached the counter. “This must be your first,” she said to the young woman behind the counter, who was still shaking her head. “It’s my fourth.” I told the airline employee that we were not getting on that plane, destined for the Istanbul airport, which I knew would be a primary target. The other woman and I nodded at each other, becoming an immediate coup pod. I went out to secure transportation for us—this airport was not going to be safe either—while she and my 7-year-old son went to retrieve our luggage. “His first too,” I said to her. In political science, the term coup refers to the illegitimate overthrow of a sitting government—usually through violence or the threat of violence. The technical term for attempting to stay in power illegitimately—such as after losing an election—is self-coup or autocoup, sometimes autogolpe.

Full Article: Is Trump Trying to Stage a Coup? – The Atlantic

National: A trio of brutal rulings for Trump’s voter fraud push | Aaron Blake/The Washington Post

Time is running very short on attempts by President Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election. In many ways, it’s already too late. Electors are required to cast their votes for president in each state on Dec. 14, and the “safe harbor” law means states have to resolve any outstanding issues by six days before then. That would be Tuesday. If the last three days are any indication, the Trump team is about to go out in a blaze of not-exactly-glory. Key rulings in Georgia and Michigan are the latest setbacks for the efforts, with judges in three cases issuing significant rebukes — a couple of which were scathing. In Georgia, the legal team representing Gov. Brian Kemp (R) and other top officials, including Kemp’s fellow Republicans, filed a brutal response to the continued litigation. Kemp has been under fire from Trump, including receiving a call from Trump this weekend in which Trump again pressured him to do something to help overturn the state’s election results. The call came shortly before Trump appeared at a rally in the state for the upcoming Senate runoff elections. Kemp, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, all Republicans, have repeatedly rebuked the claims made by Trump and his allies. But in a filing the same day as Trump’s rallies, their legal team went quite a bit further.

Full Article: Legal filings thwart Trump voter fraud effort – The Washington Post

National: Trump’s fired election-security chef compared the president’s false claims about voter fraud to Russian disinformation | Tom Porter/Business Insider

Chris Krebs, the former top US election-security official, has described President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud to Russian disinformation designed to corrode faith in US democracy. In an interview with Axios, Krebs was asked for his view on Trump, who on November 18 fired him from his position as Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the Department of Homeland Security. Krebs had rebutted the president’s claim that the result of the 2020 election was tainted by widespread ballot fraud. “The caller was inside the house,” Krebs told Axios’ Jonathan Swan. “The president is a big part of the disinformation that’s coming out there about the rigged election, but there are absolutely others.” He went on to describe how he coped with Trump’s attempts to undermine faith in the integrity of the election while he was still working for the administration: “One of the questions we asked: ‘What would we do if the Russians were doing this?'”

Full Article: Fired election security chief compares Trump claims to Russian disinfo – Business Insider

National: Scores of US poll workers tested positive for Covid over election period | Kira Lerner and Indrani Basu/The Guardian

On 5 November, two days after election day, an employee in the Onondaga county, New York, board of elections office went home early. She felt exhausted, according to the election commissioner Dustin Czarny, and assumed the long shifts were to blame. A week later she was hospitalized, tested for Covid-19, and learned she had contracted the virus. By then, unbeknown to the other employees, the virus had spread through the office where staff was working long shifts to count absentee ballots before New York’s certification deadline. Roughly 200 employees and volunteers who counted absentee ballots were sent home on 13 November and instructed to get tested. In total, 12 employees tested positive. “We had almost everybody in the office last week before Friday the 13th,” Czarny said. “Of course this all happened on Friday the 13th.” Czarny and the other commissioner closed the office and stopped vote counting for the week, informing New York they would miss the 28 November certification deadline. Czarny said the crisis is exactly what he’d hoped to avoid as they administered an election in the middle of a pandemic. “This is what we were fearing and it happened,” he said. For local election officials, the 2020 election was guaranteed to be a struggle. Record numbers of voters requested absentee ballots because of the Covid-19 pandemic, forcing election administrators to adapt to an unprecedented election. Officials had to hire additional staff, find warehouses and other locations to store ballots, and acquire protective equipment to ensure that their staff stayed healthy and safe. Despite their best efforts to stop the virus’s spread, several dozen poll workers and election officials across the country have tested positive for Covid-19, even as the link to election day in most cases is unclear. According to a Votebeat analysis of local reports, there were Covid-19 cases among election workers in at least nine counties in five states before election day, and at least 24 counties in 14 states reported positive cases among election workers in the days and weeks after.

Full Article: Scores of US poll workers tested positive for Covid over election period | US news | The Guardian

Editorial: There’s no room for complacency about our post-election crisis | Max Boot/The Washington Post

I am not remotely surprised that, more than a month after the election, President Trump refuses to concede that he lost — and that he keeps spouting cockamamie conspiracy theories to claim that he actually won. I am not surprised that Trump is filing lawsuits and lobbying Republican state officials — such as Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia — to throw out the state’s election results and appoint electors pledged to him. I am not surprised that most national Republicans are too cowardly to challenge Trump’s attempt to usurp our democracy. In a Post survey of GOP members of Congress, only 27 admitted that Joe Biden won the election, two said that Trump won, and 220 avoided the question. And I am not surprised that many rank-and-file Republicans are eager to follow Trump into coup-coup land. In polls, many Republicans say that the election was rigged despite the Trump campaign’s inability to document a single case of fraud. I’m only surprised that Trump’s tactics are failing so miserably. His campaign is 1-48 so far in court and the election results have already been certified by all of the battleground states. It seems a foregone conclusion that on Jan. 20 Biden will be inaugurated as president. In June, I took part in post-election “wargames” organized by the nonpartisan Transition Integrity Project. We foresaw Trump’s attempts to steal the election and even the mechanisms that he would use to do so. What we didn’t expect was that his power grab would fall so flat. As Rosa Brooks, a law professor at Georgetown Law, who was one of the organizers of this project, wrote in The Post, most of the exercises “reached the brink of catastrophe, with massive disinformation campaigns, violence in the streets and a constitutional impasse.”

Full Article: Opinion | There’s no room for complacency about our post-election crisis – The Washington Post

Arizona: These lawsuits challenging the election outcome are in courts this week | Maria Polletta/Arizona Republic

The failure of at least six election-related lawsuits has not deterred Republicans who continue to dispute the legitimacy of Arizona’s presidential results. An additional lawsuitchallenging President-elect Joe Biden’s 10,457-vote victory will make its way through the court system this week, and a ruling issued last week was appealed to the state’s highest court. But challengers seeking to overturn results and name new presidential electors are rapidly running out of time. State officials certified the election on Nov. 30, and Tuesday is “safe harbor day” — the deadline by which states must resolve election-related disputes if they want to guarantee Congress will count their electors’ votes. Some attorneys and lawmakers have argued states in reality have until Dec. 14 — the day electors will meet virtually to cast their votes — to address election challenges. But Arizona judges have largely attempted to stick to Tuesday’s deadline.

Full Article: Arizona election challenges could wrap up in court this week

Arizona: Federal judge to hear another lawsuit Tuesday against election results | Howard Fischer/Arizona Daily Star

Attorneys for state and county election officials head to federal court Tuesday, Dec. 8 to try to quash one of the two remaining attempts to overturn Joe Biden’s win in Arizona. In legal papers filed in federal court, Deputy Maricopa County Attorney Tim Liddy said the lawsuit, filed by the 11 Republicans who hope to be electors for President Trump, is “woefully deficient.” He said the claim is based on “conspiracy-theory laden, unsigned, redacted declarations making wild accusations” about Dominion Software, which provides election equipment to the county. And Liddy told U.S. District Court Judge Diane Humetewa that claims of hundreds of thousands of illegal votes appear to have come “out of thin air,” calling the lawsuit a “fishing expedition.” Roopali Desai, representing Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, was even more direct in saying there’s nothing to the allegations of a conspiracy to throw the election to Biden. Republican challengers contend that conspiracy involves Dominion and its officers converting Trump votes into votes for Biden. “Plaintiffs allege that this plan somehow originated in Venezuela more than a decade ago, over the year enlisted ‘rogue actors’ from various ‘countries such as Serbia’ and ‘foreign interference by Iran and China,’ compromised voting machines and software in states across the country in this election, and was ultimately executed with the assistance of thousands of Democratic, Republican, and nonpartisan election officials despite the presence of both parties in numerous states across the country, including Arizona,” Desai told Humetewa. She called it “dystopian fiction.”

Full Article: Federal judge to hear lawsuit Tuesday against Arizona’s election results | Local news | tucson.com

Colorado GOP demand for probe ofDominion Voting Systems part of “debunked conspiracy theories,” House speaker says | Saja Hindi/The Denver Post

A group of Colorado House Republicans is calling for a third-party investigation into the state’s election software and voting machines along with the formation of an election integrity commission, despite a lack of evidence for any claims of large-scale voter fraud. Colorado election officials — including Republican county clerks — have pointed to the state’s proven track record of election security that has served as a model for other states, and federal judges have dismissed allegations by President Donald Trump that the election was stolen from him. But seven Colorado House Republicans and one representative-elect penned a letter Monday to outgoing House Speaker KC Becker calling for an audit of the Dominion Voting Systems software used by the state and creation of a special committee. Becker quickly dismissed the request, accusing the Republicans who wrote the letter of trafficking in “debunked conspiracy theories.” The letter was signed by Rep. Kevin Van Winkle, of Highlands Ranch; Rep. Kim Ransom, of Douglas County; Rep. Dave Williams, of Colorado Springs; outgoing Minority Leader Patrick Neville, of Castle Rock; outgoing Rep. Perry Buck, of Windsor; Rep. Shane Sandridge, of Colorado Springs; outgoing Rep. Steve Humphrey, of Severance; and Rep.-elect Ron Hanks, of Penrose. “Free and fair elections are foundational to keeping our Republic and voters must have confidence in the election system,” they wrote in the letter. “The committee through educational hearings and sworn witness testimony from experts can help uncover any fraud or weaknesses in Colorado systems to help restore faith in the election process.”

Full Article: GOP demand for probe of Colorado’s Dominion voting system part of “debunked conspiracy theories,” House speaker says

Georgia: Federal judge throws out ‘kraken’ lawsuit challenging election results | Mark Niesse  and David Wickert/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A federal judge threw out a lawsuit Monday that relied on conspiracy theories to try to invalidate Georgia election results showing Democrat Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump. U.S. District Judge Timothy Batten dismissed the lawsuit brought by former Trump attorney Sidney Powell in an attempt to decertify Georgia’s election. He said overturning the election would have amounted to “judicial activism.” “They want this court to substitute its judgment for the 2.5 million voters who voted for Biden,” Batten, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, said in court in Atlanta. “This I’m unwilling to do.” The decision leaves Georgia’s results intact, supporting state elections officials’ statements that there was no evidence of widespread fraud. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Monday recertified the election results after a second recount again confirmed Biden defeated Trump. Powell’s lawsuit had combined a series of theories, many of them discredited, about how the election could have been rigged for Trump to lose in Georgia.

Full Article: Federal judge throws out ‘kraken’ lawsuit challenging Georgia election results

Georgia Recertifies Election Results, Affirming Biden’s Victory | Richard Fausset and Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

Georgia election officials on Monday recertified the results of the state’s presidential race after another recount reaffirmed Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory over President Trump, the third time that results showed that Mr. Trump had lost the state. The announcement delivered the latest blow to Mr. Trump’s tumultuous attempts to subvert the outcome of the election in Georgia, an effort that has caused infighting and name-calling among some Republicans. “We have now counted legally cast ballots three times, and the results remain unchanged,” Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, said at a news conference. Mr. Biden has prevailed in three separate counts of the ballots: the initial election tally; a hand recount ordered by the state; and the latest recount, which was requested by Mr. Trump’s campaign and completed by machines. The results of the machine recount on the secretary of state’s website show Mr. Biden with a lead of about 12,000 votes. Mr. Raffensperger’s announcement came less than 48 hours after Mr. Trump appeared in the state at a rally intended to support the candidacies of Georgia’s two Republican senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who are locked in high-stakes runoff races on Jan. 5 that will determine control of the Senate. The president, however, spent much of his appearance airing a long list of personal grievances over his loss to Mr. Biden in Georgia and elsewhere, claiming falsely that fraudulent voting had stolen the election from him.

Full Article: Georgia Recertifies Election Results, Affirming Biden’s Victory – The New York Times

Georgia: Why Governor Kemp won’t call a special session to illegally overturn election | Greg Bluestein/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

 

Gov. Brian Kemp has already defied President Donald Trump’s calls to illegally overturn Georgia’s election results. Now he and other Republican leaders are shooting down an effort by pro-Trump legislators to demand a special session to brazenly award Georgia’s 16 electoral votes to the GOP. The governor and other Republican leaders first ruled out a special session to help Trump undo Joe Biden’s victory on Nov. 10, and he rejected the president’s extraordinary personal plea to intervene in the election results on Saturday. But Kemp elaborated on his stance late Sunday after four Republican state senators – Brandon Beach, Greg Dolezal, William Ligon and Burt Jones – drafted a petition seeking an emergency special session because of “systemic failures” in the election system. State elections officials have said there is no widespread evidence of fraud and Georgia courts have thrown out several complaints seeking to block the certification of the vote. But Trump’s false narrative of a “stolen” election has seeped deeply into the Georgia GOP and sparked a bitter internal feud. The petition circulating over the weekend seeks to allow the Republican-controlled Legislature to “take back the power to appoint electors.” Jones, one of the organizers, said “untrustworthy” election results compelled the demand. “It is time for our legislative body to do its job,” he said. Kemp and Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, who acknowledged Joe Biden’s victory on CNN on Sunday, issued a lengthy statement detailing that a special session is “not an option that is allowed under state or federal law” – a lengthier way of saying it was illegal. In the 1960s, the General Assembly decided that Georgia’s presidential electors would be determined by the winner of the state’s popular vote. Under Georgia law, the Legislature can only outline a new method of choosing electors if the timing of the vote was shifted from the date set in federal law.

Full Article: Why Kemp won’t call a special session to illegally overturn Georgia’s election

Michigan: Armed pro-Trump protesters gather outside Secretary of State’s home | Reuters

Michigan’s secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, said dozens of armed protesters gathered in a threatening manner outside her home on Saturday evening chanting “bogus” claims about electoral fraud. Michigan officials last month certified the state’s election results showing President-elect Joe Biden had won Michigan, one of a handful of key battleground states, in the course of his 3 November election victory. Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed, contrary to evidence, that the outcome was marred by widespread fraud in multiple states. State and federal officials have repeatedly stated that there is no evidence of fraud on any significant scale, and Biden is to be sworn in on 20 January. The protesters who rallied outside Benson’s home held up placards saying “Stop the Steal” and chanted the same message, according to various clips uploaded on social media. In a Twitter statement on Sunday, Benson said the protesters were trying to spread false information about the security and accuracy of the US election system. “The demands made outside my home were unambiguous, loud and threatening.” The Michigan attorney general, Dana Nessel, in a separate Twitter post, accused the pro-Trump demonstrators of “mob-like behavior [that] is an affront to basic morality and decency”. “Anyone can air legitimate grievances to Secretary Benson’s office through civil and democratic means, but terrorizing children and families in their own homes is not activism.”

Full Article: Armed pro-Trump protesters gather outside Michigan elections chief’s home | Michigan | The Guardian

Michigan: Trump campaign appeals election case to state Supreme Court | Paul Egan/Detroit Free Press

President Donald Trump’s campaign went to the Michigan Supreme Court on Monday in connection with its earliest Michigan case challenging ballot counting in Detroit and elsewhere in the Nov. 3 election. “Unfortunately, some local election jurisdictions, including Wayne County, did not conduct the general election as required by Michigan law,” lawyers for the campaign said in a court filing. “And Secretary of State (Jocelyn) Benson did not require local election jurisdictions to allow challengers to meaningfully observe the conduct of the election and the tabulation and tallying of ballots.” Similar claims have been rejected by Michigan judges at both the state and federal levels and the specific claims in this case were rejected by Michigan Court of Claims Judge Cynthia Stephens on Nov. 5 and by the Michigan Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, on Friday. The Court of Appeals chastised the campaign for dragging its feet on the appeal, said the certification of Michigan’s election results by the Board of State Canvassers in the interim had made the lawsuit moot, and said that if the Trump campaign wanted to challenge the results it could have requested a recount, but did not. “Plaintiff failed to follow clear law in Michigan relative to such matters,” the court said. The campaign wanted an order directing Benson to require “meaningful access” for campaign poll watchers to the counting of state ballots, plus access to videotaped surveillance of ballot drop boxes installed around the state after Oct. 1. It had asked for a pause in ballot counting while the case was heard.

Full Article: Trump campaign appeals election case to Michigan Supreme Court

Michigan: Federal judge upholds election: ‘The people have spoken’ | Craig Mauger/The Detroit News

A federal judge has rejected a last-minute push by Michigan Republicans who sought an emergency order to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state, saying the effort aimed to “ignore the will of millions of voters.” The suit seemed “less about achieving the relief” the GOP plaintiffs sought and “more about the impact of their allegations on people’s faith in the democratic process and their trust in our government,” wrote Detroit U.S. District Court Judge Linda Parker of Michigan’s Eastern District. “The People have spoken,” wrote Parker, who issued the ruling in the early morning hours of Monday, a week before the nation’s presidential electors will meet. Trump lost Michigan 51%-48% or by 154,000 votes to President-elect Joe Biden, and the Board of State Canvassers certified the tally on Nov. 23. On Nov. 25, six Michigan Republicans, represented by conservative attorney Sidney Powell, filed their lawsuit asking for “emergency relief,” including a court order requiring Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to sign off on certified election results that state “President Donald Trump is the winner of the election.” The suit also asked the federal judge to impound “all voting machines and software in Michigan for expert inspection.” The defendants in Powell’s suit are Whitmer, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and the Board of State Canvassers.

Full Article: Federal judge upholds Michigan election: ‘The people have spoken’

Michigan: Federal judge rejects GOP effort to overturn election results | Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein/Politico

A federal judge on Monday tore apart Republican efforts to overturn the election results in Michigan, calling the lawsuit itself — brought by President Donald Trump’s electors in the state — an apparent effort to damage democracy. “In fact, this lawsuit seems to be less about achieving the relief Plaintiffs seek — as much of that relief is beyond the power of this Court — and more about the impact of their allegations on People’s faith in the democratic process and their trust in our government,” said Judge Linda Parker, of the U.S. District Court of Eastern Michigan. Parker’s 35-page opinion, released after midnight Monday morning, found the legal argument of the Trump electors defective for multiple reasons, most notably that it was moot because the state had already certified President-elect Joe Biden’s win in the state, sending his electors to the Electoral College. She also found that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the suit, and brought it too late to be heard. But Parker was at her most forceful when she considered the GOP electors’ goal: reversing Michigan’s entire election, disenfranchising millions of voters and declaring Trump the winner. “With nothing but speculation and conjecture that votes for President Trump were destroyed, discarded or switched to votes for Vice President Biden, Plaintiffs’ equal protection claim fails,” Parker said.

Full Article: Federal judge rejects GOP effort to overturn Michigan election results – POLITICO

New Jersey Audit of Flawless Vote Could Change Future Elections | Josh Axelrod/Governing

In most election cycles, after the excitement and crisp chill of Election Day passes, inauguration comes quickly after, without a whole lot of attention paid to the bureaucratic processes in between. Only, 2020 is not like other years. Instead, New Jersey election officials have spent the past few days hunched over tables, parsing through thousands of ballots and ensuring they match up with their recorded totals. All the while, President Donald Trump continues to cast doubt over the results of the election, placing national focus on recounts, certifications and audits. In New Jersey, the auditing process has been mandated for more than a decade, and yet, due to a legislative anomaly, has never truly been carried out before. Now, in a year of many other firsts, the audit law is kicking in due to New Jersey’s vote-by-mail election. And the timing is just right, as election audits have never been a more crucial mechanism of democracy. “We really saw this past election how incredibly critical that’s been,” Penny Venetis, Director of Rutgers University’s International Human Rights Clinic, whose been litigating election security cases in New Jersey for years, told NJ Advance Media. “If we didn’t have these ways to independently count ballots, then there would have been a cloud over votes in Georgia and Wisconsin. We need the ability to do this, especially in such a polarized political environment.”

Full Article: New Jersey Audit of Flawless Vote Could Change Future Elections

New York: Still no ruling in Brindisi-Tenney election, but judge’s comments give hints about what could come next |Patrick Lohmann/Syracuse.com

Judge Scott DelConte had sharp words Monday for both sides in a court hearing that could decide whether Republican Claudia Tenney will defeat incumbent Anthony Brindisi in New York’s 22nd Congressional District. More than a month after election day, DelConte is considering how to proceed with an election so far marked by errors and delay. The issues with various counties’ attempts at counting arose over two days of hearings about what the judge should do with 809 contested ballots. Brindisi, a Democrat, is asking for a partial recount after, for example, Oneida County election officials admitted losing track of disputed ballots that had been marked with sticky notes. Those notes apparently fell off the ballots before a court hearing. Tenney’s lawyers are asking the judge to order counties to certify the election now, cementing her lead of just 12 votes in an election where more than 318,000 votes were cast. This is the only election still contested of all 435 Congressional Districts.

Full Article: Still no ruling in Brindisi-Tenney election, but judge’s comments give hints about what could come next – syracuse.com

Pennsylvania: Trump asks House speaker for help overturning election results, personally intervening in a third state | Amy Gardner, Josh Dawsey and Rachael Bade/The Washington Post

President Trump called the speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives twice during the past week to make an extraordinary request for help reversing his loss in the state, reflecting a broadening pressure campaign by the president and his allies to try to subvert the 2020 election result. The calls, confirmed by House Speaker Bryan Cutler’s office, make Pennsylvania the third state where Trump has directly attempted to overturn a result since he lost the election to former vice president Joe Biden. He previously reached out to Republicans in Michigan, and on Saturday he pressured Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) in a call to try to replace that state’s electors. The president’s outreach to Pennsylvania’s Republican House leader came after his campaign and its allies decisively lost numerous legal challenges in the state in both state and federal court. Trump has continued to press his baseless claims of widespread voting irregularities both publicly and privately. “The president said, ‘I’m hearing about all these issues in Philadelphia, and these issues with your law,’ ” said Cutler spokesman Michael Straub, describing the House speaker’s two conversations with Trump. “ ‘What can we do to fix it?’ ” A White House spokesman declined to comment on the calls to Cutler, and a Trump campaign spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. Cutler told the president that the legislature had no power to overturn the state’s chosen slate of electors, Straub said. But late last week, the House speaker was among about 60 Republican state lawmakers who sent a letter to Pennsylvania’s congressional representatives urging them to object to the state’s electoral slate on Jan. 6, when Congress is set to formally accept the results.

Full Article: Trump asks Pennsylvania House speaker for help overturning election results, personally intervening in a third state – The Washington Post

Pennsylvania: With time running out, GOP state reps file new challenge to election results, citing already rejected claims of fraud | eremy Roebuck/Philadelphia Inquirer

They requested the court withdraw Pennsylvania’s final vote tally — a case they supported with already debunked conspiracy theories and a bevy of complaints that have previously been rejected by state and federal judges in earlier legal fights. Meanwhile, in a separate filing, several of the same lawmakers joined more than 30 other GOP state House colleagues in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to consider a push from U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly (R., Pa.) to roll back Pennsylvania’s certified results based on his arguments that the state’s vote-by-mail law is unconstitutional. All this came as President Donald Trump’s lawyers waged a smaller-scale — but likely equally quixotic fight — over roughly 2,000 mail ballots they are seeking to disqualify in Bucks County in what has become the campaign’s last active legal challenge in the state. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, where the campaign is pressing that case, already rejected similar suits involving ballots from Philadelphia and Montgomery County challenged over identical issues.With legal briefs flying, Lyndsay Kensinger, a spokesperson for Gov. Tom Wolf, dismissed the Republicans’ latest efforts Monday as “just another attempt … to spread disinformation and ignore reality.”

Full Article: With time running out, GOP state reps file new challenge to Pa.’s election results, citing already rejected claims of fraud

Texas: Rep. Ron Wright calls for investigation of election amid unsubstantiated fraud claims | Brian Lopez/Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Republican U.S. Rep. Ron Wright of Arlington is calling for an investigation into the 2020 election after Attorney General William Barr said the Justice Department uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud. Since Joe Biden won the election, President Donald Trump has challenged the result in key states with lawsuits, but Trump has found no success. In a statement Monday, Wright said he urges Barr to appoint a special counsel as it would ensure that allegations of voter fraud are investigated to the fullest extent by the Justice Department. Wright said an investigation would “ultimately restore the American people’s utmost faith in our democratic system.” The statement did not clarify if Wright was talking only about the presidential election or every election, which would include his victory. The Star-Telegram reached out to Wright, but his office did not immediately respond. Wright joins Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick as Texas officials who have at one point refused to acknowledge Biden as the winner and have claimed that all legal votes need to be counted. Political experts have said Republicans don’t want to get on the bad side of the party and Trump, who is still in office, so they still voice support for him.

Full Article: Arlington TTX congressman wants investigation of election | Fort Worth Star-Telegram