A federal appeals court rejected the Trump campaign’s lawsuit contesting Pennsylvania’s election results Friday, saying the campaign’s arguments are “light on facts” and “have no merit.”
“The Campaign never alleges that any ballot was fraudulent or cast by an illegal voter,” Trump-appointed Judge Stephanos Bibas wrote . “It never alleges that any defendant treated the Trump campaign or its votes worse than it treated the Biden campaign or its votes. Calling something discrimination does not make it so. The Second Amended Complaint still suffers from these core defects, so granting leave to amend would have been futile.”
Advertisement
The three judges, all appointed by Republican presidents, determined that District Judge Matthew Brann’s order from last week was justified in rejecting the Trump’s campaign’s lawsuit, according to The Hill.
Brann dismissed the Trump campaign lawsuit with prejudice and compared their arguments to a “Frankenstein’s monster … haphazardly stitched together,” with “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations.”
Advertisement
In Friday’s ruling the judges wrote: “The Campaign’s claims have no merit. The number of ballots it specifically challenges is far smaller than the roughly 81,000-vote margin of victory. And it never claims fraud or that any votes were cast by illegal voters. Plus, tossing out millions of mail-in ballots would be drastic and unprecedented, disenfranchising a huge swath of the electorate and upsetting all down-ballot races too. That remedy would be grossly disproportionate to the procedural challenges raised.”
