Top court swiftly ends Trump-backed Texas bid

President Donald Trump's campaign and his allies already had lost in numerous lawsuits in state...
President Donald Trump's campaign and his allies already had lost in numerous lawsuits in state and federal courts challenging the election results. Photo: Reuters
The United States Supreme Court has rejected a long-shot lawsuit filed by Texas and backed by President Donald Trump seeking to throw out voting results in four states, dealing him a crushing setback in his quest to undo his election loss to President-elect Joe Biden.

The justices in a brief order on Friday said Texas did not have legal standing to bring the case against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The case was filed on Tuesday by the Republican attorney general of Texas, a Trump ally. The Republican president on Wednesday filed a motion to intervene and become a plaintiff.

The Supreme Court's 6-3 conservative majority includes three justices appointed by Trump and none of them commented in the unsigned order. Before the November 3 election, Trump said he expected its outcome to be decided by the Supreme Court.

"Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections," the court's order said.

Two of the court's conservatives, Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas, said they would have allowed Texas to sue but would not have blocked the four states from finalizing their election results.

There was no immediate response from the White House. A Biden spokesman said it was "no surprise" the high court rejected "baseless attempts" to deny Trump lost the election.

"Our nation’s highest court saw through this seditious abuse of our electoral process," Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said on Twitter.

The four states in a filing with the court on Thursday asked the justices to reject the lawsuit, which they said had no factual or legal grounds.

Trump's campaign and his allies already had lost in numerous lawsuits in state and federal courts challenging the election results. Trump has falsely claimed he won the election and has made baseless allegations of widespread voting fraud and a system "rigged" against him.

State election officials have said they have found no evidence of such fraud. Lawyers for Trump and his allies have failed to present evidence in court of the type of fraud he has alleged.

Texas had asked the justices to throw out the election results in the four states. Biden won all four states. Trump had won them in the 2016 election.

Trump and many of his fellow Republicans have made unfounded claims that the expansion of mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic led to Biden fraudulently winning in election battleground states.

Democrats and other critics have accused Trump of seeking to shatter public belief in the integrity of US elections and sabotage American democracy by trying to subvert the will of the voters.

Trump has refused to concede the election and many Republicans have not acknowledged Biden as president-elect. Biden is due to take office on January 20.

The Texas lawsuit argued that changes made by the four states to voting procedures amid the coronavirus pandemic to expand mail-in voting were unlawful.

Texas asked the Supreme Court to immediately block the four states from using the voting results to appoint presidential electors to the Electoral College, which is scheduled to formally pick the winner on Monday.

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No surprises there. It is just amazing how anyone can believe anything Trump says or does. He has been a fraud all his life and there is no sign of change.

So true! Unlike Biden who has done soooo much in his 40 year political career. I guess Biden and Harris will be frog marched out of the Whitehouse to chants of "lock them up, lock them up". Between the pay for play and election shaninigans, somebody's in trouble. That means we are looking at a president Pelosi. Trump still looks like he will win

An important aspect of the US election is that 75,000,000 people voted for Trump (cf 80,000,000 for Biden). Whilst Biden clearly won - the USA is a deeply divided country. Neither half of the country seems to have empathy with the other. This in itself is damaging to the American/world economy. Add to that the complete disaster they have created with covid-ignorance, and the determination of the losers to do as much damage as they can on the way out - banana republic economies (like ourselves) remain incredibly vulnerable to their squabbles.

On the home front, no one seems to be looking at the lessons we can learn from the systemic abuse we have seen in the USA over the last four years. Our systems are set up assuming politicians will act with honour for the good of the country. Our laws remain set up that politicians can do what they like and focus on where they see the political milage.

Is it time to review our system?

Churchill is quoted as saying "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter". Another argument has to be examination of the extremely comfortable career path professional politicians with good PR skills enjoy.

Hello, Biden clearly didn't win. There is significant fraud which is brodcats and published on a wide variety of places other than the ODT. Biden still hasn't been declared president elect because Wisconsin hasn't certified their election results and Georgia's are still in dispute. You really think Biden got more votes than Obama or Clinton? No way! Biden couldn't get people to show up for his rallies. It's a scam! He will go down as the most illegitimate presidential candidate or (God forbid) president in history.

It wasn't a 'long shot', and shame on the court; they will come to regret it.

Let's put the decision in context; the Supreme Court didn't reject the case based upon the facts of the case. It rejected the case because Texas lacked legal standing since it could not show that its own interest, as a state, had been injured; in other words, Texas could not show that it could even possibly suffer an injury. But President Trump can make that very claim, arguing that if the various facts and theories argued in the Texas case were correct, he would have won the Electoral College. In other words, Trump, unlike Texas, can claim what the law calls an “injury in fact,” the major criteria necessary to claim standing. So, at least theoretically, lawyers for Trump could copy virtually the entire case, including the novel theories and claims it contained, and file it in his own name because he would be in a much stronger position to claim legal standing. Since Trump is an individual and not a state, he would have to file his case in a lower court, not the Supreme Court, but theoretically he could do it. So GrIZZ, David and IRD; NO Trump hasnt lost. BTW, Trump has only filed 3 lawsuits. To date, none of which have been adjudicated by the courts.

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