Giuliani says Trump will file suit in Pennsylvania contesting Biden win
The Trump campaign has pursued a litigation strategy after the election.
Rudy Giuliani, President Trump's personal lawyer, vowed to file a lawsuit Monday to challenge the conduct of elections officials in Pennsylvania – in statements made just moments after network analysis and projections showed Democrat Joe Biden had secured the electoral votes needed to win the White House.
In comments laced with vague and unfounded allegations of voter fraud in Pennsylvania, Giuliani, speaking in Philadelphia, alleged that the Trump campaign was deprived of the ability to watch the ballots being processed. And he said the campaign would make similar allegations in other states that could lead to a “massive nation-wide lawsuit.”
“We were deprived of the right to inspect if a single one of those ballots is legitimate,” Giuliani said, making an unverified claim that so far been unsupported by any evidence. “That is unheard of, it’s illegal, it’s unconstitutional, and we will be bringing an action challenging that.”
The Trump campaign has now brought multiple similar charges into court since Election Day – in Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania -- and all but one of the cases has been rejected. In Pennsylvania, a state judge ordered election officials to allow observers to move closer to poll workers, but a federal judge refused to halt the count based on the claims.
In several of the cases, judges have used strikingly similar language to criticize Trump campaign attorneys for bringing the cases without sufficient evidence.
The senior attorney for Biden said he has yet to see legal action he considers capable of impacting the outcome of the election.
“The lawsuits are meritless,” Bob Bauer said Thursday. “All of this is intended to create a large cloud that, it is the hope of the Trump campaign, that nobody can see through. But it is not a very thick cloud. It's not hard to see what they're doing. We see through it. So will the courts, and so do election officials.”
Observers are permitted to watch the processing of ballots in most states, including Pennsylvania, but not allowed to intervene as the ballots are processed. They can note any irregularities and report them back to their campaign’s legal team. In Philadelphia and elsewhere, elections officials asked observers to stay back about 15 feet from the workers due to concerns about coronavirus.
Giuliani alleged that Trump campaign representatives were not close enough to see if ballots had errors or irregularities. But for days, Trump campaign officials have not been able to explain what remedy they could expect should a court agree that they were not given sufficient access to watch the poll workers open mail-in ballot envelopes and inspect them to make sure signatures match, dates are accurate, and the secrecy envelope is used properly.
In an appearance on Fox News Friday night, the man Trump appointed to organize his legal strategy, longtime conservative operative David Bossie, said the team was still looking into that question.
"The campaign's figuring out exactly what our legal remedies are," Bossie replied. "We're going to fight for every single legal vote, and we're going to make sure we fight for those illegal votes to be thrown out."
In his appearance in Philadelphia Saturday, Giuliani speculated that the campaign could seek “a wide range of equitable remedies.”
He speculated the campaign could ask the courts to disqualify some unspecified number of votes.
“It could be to set aside an election,” Giuliani posited, but then appeared to backtrack, saying that could be the wrong remedy.
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