Trump Finally Out As US Supreme Court Dismisses Texas Appeal

Donald Trump suffered another legal setback on Friday before the United States Supreme Court, which refused to take up a lawsuit initiated by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The appeal sought to overturn presidential results in four key states.

Mr Paxton challenged in his petition the legality of postal voting in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia. He argued that the vote of the 62 major voters gathered in these four states, scheduled for next Monday, could not take place before their respective legislative assemblies had investigated the irregularities he alleged.

The nine judges of the US Supreme Court, including three appointed by Donald Trump, ruled that Texas was not entitled to interfere in the organization of elections in other states.

Donald Trump had nevertheless considered this case very solid, by personally intervening in the procedure. On Wednesday, the outgoing president himself presented, as a citizen and not president, a motion asking the country’s highest court to let him join the appeal, which he described on Twitter as one that matters.

Attorneys general of 17 other states had supported Ken Paxton’s approach and asked the court to hear the case. More than 120 elected Republican Congressmen were also formally associated with the process, however much criticized by legal experts.

The attorneys general of the four states concerned, three Democrats and a Republican, had rebuffed the instigator of the process. They had asked the United States Supreme Court on Thursday to dismiss his petition to strike down the presidential election. The three Democrats even accused him, as well as those who support his appeal, of wanting to pervert democracy.

In response to the US Supreme Court ruling, Texas Republican Party Chairman Allen West issued a statement proposing that law-abiding states should bind together and form a union of states that respect the Constitution.

According to him, this decision sets a precedent according to which states can violate the Constitution and go unpunished, even if the alleged violation has never been demonstrated.

The authorities of the targeted states did not find any irregularities likely to overturn the election and have themselves already rejected Republican requests since the elections of November 3.

This legal setback follows around fifty complaints filed by Donald Trump’s allies, all of which – with one exception – have been rejected by the courts or abandoned for lack of tangible evidence to support accusations of massive fraud. Mr Trump has achieved only one half-court victory so far: a Supreme Court justice in November ordered ballots arriving by mail after election day to be treated separately from others newsletters in Pennsylvania.

The Supreme Court had already rejected Tuesday a Republican appeal to invalidate the victory of President-designate Joe Biden in Pennsylvania.