President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign on Thursday saw losses in three lawsuits challenging ballots related to President-elect Joe Biden’s projected election victory, hours after it dropped its own federal suit in Michigan that sought to block the certification of Detroit-area ballots.
Th trio of defeats came on the same day as Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani claimed at a press conference, without evidence, that widespread fraud had denied Trump a victory in the election.
The losses make it even more unlikely that Trump can overcome already long odds of invalidating enough votes, in enough states, to overturn Biden’s win in the race for the White House.
In Pennsylvania, the Trump campaign lost its appeal in the Court of Common Pleas of a decision by the Bucks County Board of Elections to allow the count of certain mail-in ballots there.
In Arizona, the Maricopa County Court dismissed a lawsuit by the state Republican Party that had sought to expand an audit of Arizona’s election results, and also denied a bid to have Maricopa County barred from certifying its election results.
And in Georgia, the attorney L. Lin Wood saw a federal judge, who was appointed by Trump last year, reject his request to block the state from certifying its vote tally, which Biden is projected to win, as in Pennsylvania and Arizona.
Judge Steven Grimberg said he was unwilling to block the certification of millions of votes in Georgia, saying it “would breed confusion and potential disenfranchisement.”
Grimberg said the claims from the campaign had “no basis either in fact or law,” according to a New York Times reporter covering the hearing.
The 0-3 result for Trump’s campaign on Thursday came on the heels of its decision to drop the federal lawsuit in Michigan, which had sought to stop the certification of ballots in Wayne County, Michigan.
And it came after the campaign and its allies had already lost or withdrew 29 other post-election legal cases, according to the Democracydocket.com, which is tracking such cases.
“Numerous courts, election officials from both parties, and even officials within Trump’s own administration, have all reaffirmed that claims of widespread voter fraud are categorically false,” said Biden campaign spokesman Michael Gwin.
Gwin decried the “absurdity of Donald Trump’s thoroughly discredited claims of voter fraud.”
Biden is projected to win 306 votes in the Electoral College, 36 more than needed to win the presidency. Trump would have to invalidate the projected popular votes of several states to reverse the Democrat’s victory. Legal observers say there is not evidence of enough improper ballots in even a single state to overturn its current results.
A lawyer for Trump’s campaign said the Michigan case was being withdrawn because that county’s board of canvassers “met and declined to certify the results of the presidential election.”
But that statement is false: The board voted to certify the results, after an outcry over Republican members who initially voted not to certify.
Those two GOP members now say they want to rescind their votes. But state officials say that is not possible, and that the certification is official.
Giuliani said the withdrawal came “as a direct result of achieving the relief we sought: to stop the election in Wayne County from being prematurely certified before residents can be assured that every legal vote has been counted and every illegal vote has not been counted.”
