'Impossible to lose more': Trump suffers embarrassing blow
Donald Trump’s last-ditch effort to subvert the election has officially been rejected.
A lawsuit filed by a Trump ally in Texas asked the Supreme Court to overturn the outcome in four key states won by president-elect Joe Biden. The suit was universally condemned as “insane”, “laughable” and “mendacious” by legal experts who gave it zero chance of success.
The Supreme Court on Friday (local time) unanimously slapped down the lawsuit.
Trump had called the suit against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin “the big one” that would end with the Supreme Court undoing Biden’s substantial Electoral College majority and allow him to serve another four years in the White House.
It was simply the latest claim in a very long list of lies and nonsense continually spouted by the outgoing president.
The court’s order was its second this week rebuffing Republican requests that it get involved in the 2020 election outcome and overturn the will of voters. But it was the most publicised one after as many as 17 states tacitly signed on to support it.
In a brief order, the court said Texas does not have the legal right to sue those states because it “has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections.”
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, who have said previously the court does not have the authority to turn away lawsuits between states, said they would have heard Texas’ complaint. But they would not have done as Texas wanted pending resolution of the lawsuit, and set aside those four states’ 62 electoral votes which were won by Biden.
‘It’s impossible to lose more’
The Supreme Court moved with unusual speed to shoot down the GOP’s latest attack on the election result.
It’s believed the frivolous lawsuit was merely a loyalty test for other Republicans who publicly supported it despite any real chance of success. Nonetheless, according to CNN’s White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins, Trump was telling people he thought it would be accepted by the court.
As Supreme Court lawyer Neal Katyal remarked on the outcome of the Texas suit: “It’s impossible to lose more”.
“Not a single vote for Trump. Not one,” he posted on Twitter.
Folks are asking what Justice Alito was saying. He is saying he thinks Texas has the right to file papers but that it wouldn’t matter because if they did he wouldn’t rule for them anyway.
It is a strong 9-0 loss for Trump. It’s impossible to lose more.— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) December 11, 2020
2/ And have we ever before seen so many officials say “hey! That losing you’re doing so hideously, so flailingly, so spasmodically — that looks like something I want to be a part of!
“This effort, based on nonsense and lies, to disenfranchise millions of Americans, sign me up!”— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) December 12, 2020
Several Republicans who signed their names to the amicus brief for the Texas lawsuit understood it would likely quickly be shot down by the Supreme Court and only viewed it, like many other things in Trump's world, as a loyalty test. But Trump told people he thought he'd prevail.
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) December 11, 2020
The Supreme Court gave the Texas case all the respect it deserved.
The Attorneys General and amici who supported it should be laughed at for the rest of their careers. They should never be taken seriously again.— Christian Vanderbrouk (@UrbanAchievr) December 11, 2020
Trump appointees vote down the case
Three Trump appointees sit on the high court. In his push to get the most recent of his nominees, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, confirmed quickly, Trump said she would be needed for any post-election lawsuits.
Barrett appears to have participated in both cases this week. None of the Trump appointees noted a dissent in either case.
Republican support for the lawsuit and its call to throw out millions of votes in four battleground states based on baseless claims of fraud was an extraordinary display of the party’s willingness to subvert the will of voters.
The effort was widely condemned and excoriated for its lack of legal merit and for setting a new precedent for the conservative Republican party in its willingness to engage in anti-democratic forms of voter suppression.
with AP
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