President Donald Trump may have given subtle hints that he is finally coming to terms with his defeat in the presidential election, but that doesn't stop him from challenging the election results. Much to the president, and his campaign's chagrin, they lost their legal fight to reverse his narrow loss to Democrat Joe Biden in Pennsylvania on Friday.
On Nov. 27, a federal appeals court dealt the Trump campaign's attempt to reverse the presidential election results another blow. In its stinging opinion, the federal appeals court said the campaign's legal drive was not backed by evidence, and its allegations in Pennsylvania are without merit.
The president's lawyers said they would appeal to the Supreme Court despite the judge's verdict that the campaign's claims lack substantive elements. One of Trump's appointees, 3rd Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas, wrote for the three-judge panel that free and fair elections are the lifeblood of American democracy.
Bibas went on to say that charges of unfairness aren't trivial, adding that an election does not become unfair simply by calling it so. Charges should be backed by proof and require specific allegations, he explained.
He pointed out that the campaign didn't allege any ballot was cast by an illegal voter or was fraudulent. Moreover, it did not claim that any defendant treated the Trump campaign and the Biden campaign or their votes differently; he said describing something as discrimination does not make it so.
Bibas attributed his decision to not grant a leave to amend to these core defects, CNN reported. Trump and some of his allies have raised questions regarding the legitimacy of the presidential election and have constantly tried to overturn results in key states.
The Trump campaign's lawsuit aimed to block Pennsylvania from officially certifying former vice president Joe Biden's 80,555-vote margin of victory. on Tuesday, Governor Tom Wolf and Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar made sure that the outcome was certified, USA Today reported.
Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani argued the case in a lower court last week, claiming that the recently concluded presidential election was subject to widespread fraud in Pennsylvania during five hours of oral arguments. Despite making this claim, he was unable to offer any proof of that in court.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann, a Republican, had compared the campaign's complaint to "Frankenstein’s Monster" that has been haphazardly stitched together. Brann even denied Giuliani to right to amend it another time.