© David Goldman/AP PhotoA Republican election challenger at right watches over election inspectors as they examine a ballot as votes are counted into the early morning hours at the central counting board in Detroit, Mich., on Nov. 4, 2020.
President Trump's campaign said it scored two victories Monday in its effort to contest results in several key battleground states, as
Michigan state legislators agreed to hold a hearing into election irregularities while a
federal appeals court expedited proceedings to consider Trump's legal challenge in Pennsylvania.
The developments were announced by Trump campaign senior legal counsel Jenna Ellis, who said the GOP-led Michigan House would hold its hearing at 9 a.m. on Wednesday.
"We are grateful to Michigan House lawmakers for not rushing to certify inaccurate election results," Ellis told Just the News. "We are confident they will share the same concerns once they see the extent of the outright fraud and disregard for the law that happened in Michigan and across the nation.
Every American should want to know the truth."
Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield, who over the weekend said he feared the state was heading toward a constitutional crisis, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday ruled Trump's "motion for emergency expedited review is granted at the direction of the court."
The campaign must file its initial brief by Monday afternoon, and the court said it "will advise if oral argument desired."
The Trump campaign is
appealing U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann's decision Saturday to dismiss the campaign's lawsuit seeking to throw out hundreds of thousands of votes in Pennsylvania on the grounds that Democratic-led counties made changes to voting that violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution.
Brann, an appointee of President Barack Obama, wrote that he "has no authority to take away the right to vote of even a single person, let alone millions of citizens."
His ruling cleared the way for Pennsylvania officials to certify results. Ellis cheered the appeals court intervention.
"We are grateful to the Third Circuit for accepting an expedited review," she said. "There was no legal reason to deny our amended complaint, other than pure politics and judicial activism. This was an Obama-appointed judge whose opinion was rife with errors. We hope the appellate court will recognize that and properly give us our day in court. The American people deserve for us be able to bring forward our witnesses and evidence showing election fraud — this is at the heart election integrity and fundamental fairness."
Comment: This news came around the same time that the MI Board of Canvassers voted to certify the election results (after the initial refusal of the two GOP canvassers).
The MI Supreme Court has urged the lower court to
assess claims of fraud quickly, regarding a lawsuit filed by two Republican poll watchers on November 8. They were seeking to halt certification prior to an audit being carried out. A state judge rejected the lawsuit, so the citizens appealed to the Court of Appeals, which also denied them, so they took it to the state supreme court on the 17th. The supreme court also rejected the appeal, but left certain doors open for the lawsuit:
While the state's highest court ruled to deny the appeal and disagreed with the lawsuit's premise that an audit should take place before certification, it acknowledged in an order (pdf) the presence of "troubling and serious allegations of fraud and irregularities." It also noted that the plaintiffs presented evidence to substantiate their allegations, including in support of claims that ballots were counted from voters whose names were not on poll books and that instructions were given by elections officials to "disobey election laws and regulations."
In an opinion, the two judges then called for "the most expedited consideration possible of the remaining issues," adding that a trial court should "meaningfully assess" plaintiffs' allegations by way of an evidentiary hearing and resolve any related legal issues.
"I am cognizant that many Americans believe that plaintiffs' claims of electoral fraud and misconduct are frivolous and obstructive, but I am equally cognizant that many Americans are of the view that the 2020 election was not fully free and fair," wrote Michigan Supreme Court Justice Stephen Markman, with Justice Brian Zahra joining him in the opinion. They called the latter view one that "strikes at the core of concerns about this election's lack of both 'accuracy' and 'integrity.'"
...
The above claims were initially laid out in a lawsuit filed on Nov. 8 by Republican poll watchers, Cheryl Costantino and Edward McCall, against Detroit and Wayne County officials. Their complaint (pdf) claimed election workers counted ballots from voters not listed on the qualified voter file and that, when a voter's name could not be confirmed, random names were picked from the list. They also alleged election workers removed Republican vote challengers from Detroit's TCF Center when they raised objections and that poll workers were told by election officials to not verify signatures on absentee ballots and to process them even if they were invalid.
...
While denying Costantino and McCall's calls to halt the audit, the Michigan Supreme Court said its decision does not preclude plaintiffs from seeking a future "results audit" and that the high court would retain its appellate and superintending authority over the case to allow the case to be expedited ahead of the tight deadline for Michigan to certify electors.
"Federal law imposes tight time restrictions on Michigan's certification of our electors," the judges wrote. "Plaintiffs should not have to file appeals following our standards processes and procedures to obtain a final answer from this Court on such weighty issues."
Over in Pennsylvania, a legislative committee
rejected a House of Reps request for a risk-limiting audit. Now why would they go and do such a thing?
Something tells me the Democrats wouldn't let that happen though.