Giuliani argues in federal court to block certification of Pennsylvania’s vote
Mark Nance/For the Observer-Reporter
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani arrives in federal court Tuesday in Williamsport.
Mark Nance/For the Observer-Reporter
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, center, waves to the crowd as he arrives at the U.S. Federal Courthouse and Herman T. Schneebeli Federal Office Building Tuesday for a hearing before U.S. District Court Judge Matthew T. Brann Tuesday.
Mark Nance/For the Observer-Reporter
Trump supporters show their enthusiasm for the president’s legal team as as they demonstrate in the Wegmans parking lot across the street from the U.S. Federal Courthouse and Herman T. Schneebeli Federal Office Building Tuesday.
President Donald J. Trump’s campaign took its legal fight to federal court in Williamsport Tuesday to try to block the certification of Pennsylvania’s vote count.
President-elect Joe Biden holds a lead of more than 74,000 votes over Trump in unofficial voting results. The president is fighting in court to win Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes and has lawyers in states throughout the nation filing lawsuits to stop election counts.
U.S. District Court Judge Matthew W. Brann did not render a ruling in the case. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani served as lead counsel representing the Trump campaign, while Daniel Donovan was lead attorney for state Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar.
The court case is over the Trump campaign’s federal lawsuit seeking to prevent the battleground state of Pennsylvania from certifying its election. Withering questions from the judge gave Trump’s opponents hope that the lawsuit will be one of many filed by the Trump campaign around the country to be tossed out of court.
During several hours of arguments, Brann told Giuliani that agreeing with him would disenfranchise the more than 6.8 million Pennsylvanians who voted.
“Can you tell me how this result could possibly be justified?” Brann questioned. Giuliani responded, “the scope of the remedy is because of the scope of the injury.”
Meanwhile, lawyers defending Boockvar, Philadelphia and several counties said the Trump campaign’s arguments lack any constitutional basis or were rendered irrelevant by a state Supreme Court decision Tuesday.
They asked Brann to throw out the case, calling the evidence cited “at best, garden-variety irregularities” that would not warrant undoing Pennsylvania’s election results.
The Trump campaign’s lawsuit is based on a complaint that Philadelphia and six Democratic-controlled counties in Pennsylvania let voters make corrections to mail-in ballots that were otherwise going to be disqualified for a technicality, like lacking a secrecy envelope or a signature.
It is not clear how many ballots that could involve, although some opposing lawyers say it is far too few to overturn the election result.
But Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, spent most of his time in court claiming baselessly that a wide-ranging scheme in Pennsylvania and elsewhere stole the election from Trump in battleground states won by Biden.
Democrats in control in major cities in those states – Giuliani name-checked Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Milwaukee and Detroit – prevented Republican observers from watching election workers process mail-in ballots so the workers could falsify enough ballots to ensure Trump lost, Giuliani claimed, without evidence to back it up.
“The best description of this situation is widespread, nationwide voter fraud, of which this is a part. … This is not an isolated case, this is a case that is repeated in at least 10 other jurisdictions,” Giuliani said, without citing any evidence.
Later, he claimed, “they stole the election.”
The dozens of affidavits Trump’s lawyers filed in the case, however, do not assert widespread fraud, but rather the potential for something fishy to occur because partisan poll watchers weren’t given an opportunity to view the results.
Brann did not rule Tuesday. He canceled a Thursday hearing to air the Trump campaign’s evidence and instead gave the parties three more days to file arguments in the case. Next Tuesday is the deadline for Pennsylvania’s counties to certify their election results.
Tuesday’s proceedings featured five hours of testimony, which included an hour delay because of a technological issue with telephones about two hours into the hearing.
Supporters of Trump stood outside the court for nearly the entire hearing, shouting “four more years” and holding up signs that read “Dead People Can’t Vote,” “Stop the Fraud” and “Stop the Steal,” along with other signs alleging voter irregularity in the commonwealth and nation.
The courthouse perimeter was lined with security, including state police and extra police patrols. The surrounding streets were blocked off to traffic with metal fences.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.