President Trump on Wednesday moved to intervene in Texas’s lawsuit seeking Supreme Court intervention to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in key battleground states that would tip the scales in his favor.
The president’s attorney filed the motion to intervene hours after Trump indicated he planned to get involved in the case in which the Texas attorney general is alleging that the new voting processes in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin skewed the presidential election results and that electors should not be allowed to cast their votes for President-elect Joe Biden.
Trump has for weeks spread false claims alleging the election was “stolen” or “rigged.” But his lawsuit does not make such claims.
Instead, his attorney wrote that “it is not necessary for the Plaintiff in Intervention to prove that fraud occurred, however; it is only necessary to demonstrate that the elections in the defendant States materially deviated from the ‘manner’ of choosing electors established by their respective state Legislatures.”
The case cites at times inaccurate evidence to question the election results, such as the claim that no candidate has won both Florida and Ohio, as Trump did, and lost the presidential election. Former President Nixon won both states but lost the race in 1960.
The president’s motion to intervene cites a Rasmussen poll that found 47 percent of Americans — mostly Republicans — believe the election was stolen.
But it is Trump who has pushed that narrative the loudest in recent weeks, spreading misinformation on social media and refusing to concede defeat even as states certify their results, in some cases after hand recounts.
The motion was filed by attorney John Eastman on behalf of Trump in his capacity as president of the United States.
Eastman made headlines earlier this year for penning an op-ed in Newsweek that called into question whether Vice President-elect Kamala Harris was eligible for the position based on the citizenship status of her parents at the time of her birth. The column was widely condemned, and Newsweek later apologized.
The Texas case has largely been dismissed by legal experts as unserious and a publicity stunt. The Supreme Court has not yet indicated whether it will hear the case. The high court dismissed a case a day earlier brought by Pennsylvania Republicans to nullify Biden’s victory in the state.
But the Texas case has become a rallying cry for Trump and his allies. Seventeen state attorneys general have signed on to the case, which was filed just a week before the Electoral College is set to meet to formally certify the winner of the 2020 election.
“President Trump is fully committed to ensuring election integrity and fulfilling his oath to defend and protect the United States Constitution against state officials’ misconduct and violations of law that irredeemably compromised this election,” Jenna Ellis, a legal adviser to the Trump campaign, said in a statement.
“We look forward to the Supreme Court resolving these important issues of election integrity that ultimately affect all Americans, and providing a remedy to the corruption that occurred,” she added.
The Trump campaign has yet to produce concrete evidence of corruption or widespread fraud in court.
Attorney General William Barr has said his department has yet to see proof that widespread fraud occurred that would change the outcome.
Updated 5:25 p.m.