WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th November, 2020) US President Donald Trump in an attempt to block his Democratic rival Joe Biden's path to the White House files lawsuits in key battleground states and mounts voting fraud allegations, which are downplayed by his opponents as too insufficient and inconclusive to question the election outcome.
Biden's team dismissed attacks as "just noise" and has announced the launch of the transition of power, despite the Republican incumbent's reluctance to concede defeat, projected by major US media outlets, but not yet finalized in the official count.
"The blatant voter fraud throughout corrupt Democrat-run cities is unprecedented. The Left has proven that there is nothing they will not do to rip power away from the American People. When they come after ME, they're really coming after YOU and everything YOU stand for," the Trump campaign says in numerous letters it sends out to solicit donations for the Election Defense Fund.
The Trump campaign has filed lawsuits in Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania essentially seeking courts to stop state certifications of the vote. Three battleground states, which carry combined 47 electoral votes, flipped blue by narrow margins and gave Biden a majority to claim victory in the presidential race.
In Pennsylvania the complaint focuses on the mail-in voting, which, according to the plaintiff, funneled nearly 2.65 million ballots, despite lacking "all of the hallmarks of transparency and verifiability that were present for in-person voters." That included "not adequately verifying the voter's identity, permitting ballots received up to three days after the election to be counted without any evidence of timely mailings, such as a postmark, and denying sufficient monitoring over the reviewing and counting of mail-in ballots," the Trump campaign alleged.
The lawsuit in Arizona contends that the city of Phoenix incorrectly rejected votes cast in-person on Election Day and asks for the manual inspection of ballots in question. The campaign said in a statement that it has collected declarations from voters who witnessed the problem and allege that it occurred on a large scale.
The suit in Michigan relies on affidavits from witnesses, who, according to the Trump campaign, say that they saw election officials "counting ineligible ballots, counting batches of the same ballots multiple times, counting illegal late ballots and pre-dating them, accepting ballots deposited in drop boxes after the deadline, and duplicating ballots illegally." The complaint alleges "illegal and official intimidation and interference with lawful election challengers, harassment of Republican challengers tolerated or perpetrated by election officials, and arbitrary and unequal treatment of Republican challengers."
"We must DEFEND Michigan. President Trump was up BIG on Election night and then - almost as if it was magic - THOUSANDS of Biden votes were dumped late at night in Michigan, with absolutely NO overview. Insanity!" the incumbent's campaign said in a letter.
The White House spokeswoman and Trump's campaign senior adviser Kayleigh McEnany appeared recently on Fox news brandishing a pile of papers, which she claimed to be a 234-page affidavit collection from Michigan. "We keep hearing the drumbeat 'Where is the evidence?' Right here... 234 pages of of sworn affidavit. Real people, real allegations, signed with notary," McEnany said.
She alleged that witnesses among other contentions testified that in Michigan's Wayne County they saw a batch of ballots with 60 percent having the same signature. "They are saying that 35 ballots had no voting record, but were counted anyway, that 50 ballots were run multiple times through a tabulation machine," McEnany said. "One woman said he son was deceased, but never less somehow voted."
There are also testimonies of Democrats handing out instructions how "to distract GOP [Republican] challengers," according to McEnany. "Anyone who cares about the transparency and the integrity of the system should want this to pursue to the discovery phase," she said.
The Wall Street Journal said that in Arizona and Pennsylvania the Trump campaign has offered no evidence of fraud and anticipates the dismissal of lawsuits in these states. "Few courts have considered these types of requests in the past, leaving few precedents. Legal experts said it is unlikely that judges would block finalizing votes in a state unless there was evidence of widespread fraud," the newspaper wrote.
Kate Bedingfield, Biden deputy campaign manager, claimed that Trump "simply has no evidence." "And to succeed in a lawsuit that will stop certification there must be evidence of a problem with the process. They have to come forward with evidence of fraud and problems, which despite multiple opportunities to do so they have not been able to do so," she said during a briefing earlier this week.
Georgia, another battleground state where Biden is winning, has ordered a manual recount of all its 5 million votes due to a close margin between the contestants who are separated by less than 0.3 percentage points. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger expressed certainty that results will be proven accurate. In an interview with CNN he denied allegations of widespread irregularities and expected the recount to be completed by November 20, which is the state certification deadline. Trump is also anticipated to request a recount in Wisconsin, one more key state where he closely trails Biden.
In an attempt to sway public opinion the Trump campaign started publishing on its website lists of deceased Americans whose identities were allegedly used to cast a vote. So far it has produced seven Names from Pennsylvania and Georgia.
"Linda Kesler of Nicholson, Georgia, died in 2003, but someone cast a ballot under her identity in last week's election. Nicholson's death notice ran in the Journal-Constitution when she passed away," one of the statements said with an obituary copy attached to it.
The Washington Post analyzed and seemingly debunked four videos which went viral�over social networks and are often represented as an evidence of election irregularities.
One of them appears to show an election official destroying a ballot for Trump in El Paso, Texas. The author, Dale Harrison, several days later admitted in a Facebook post that his video was a prank and local authorities provided "a laundry list of reasons" corroborating that, the newspaper wrote.
"No senior staffers who are tasked with hiring election workers recognized him, and the office had no paperwork for the required background check. Moreover, anyone who was associated with vote counting was issued a specialized lanyard, according to the office. In the video, Harrison is not wearing one," according to publication.
"The office also said judges who work in vote processing do not wear yellow vests and the location where the video was filmed does not match the El Paso County Clerk and Record's office or any of their facilities. The signage does, however, resemble a space where Harrison has filmed other videos posted to his social media accounts," the newspaper added.
Another fact-checked video from Election Day shows a woman who was caught on camera casting at least three ballots in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The footage has gained over 300,000 views and was, according to the Washington Post, retweeted by Trump campaigners as an evidence of ballot stuffing.
"It is lawful for people to act as agents on behalf of voters who cannot engage in the process of voting for themselves � due to illness, infirmity, etc. It is also lawful to drop mail in a mailbox on behalf of other people," the publication quotes Philadelphia District Attorney's Office spokeswoman Jane Roh. She said that her office reviewed the video on Election Day and found nothing "conclusive of wrongdoing." No accusations related to the footage were ever reported to authorities, Ron added.
The Wall Street Journal cites "many of the advisers and lawyers" to the incumbent who doubt their effort will succeed and say it is "aimed largely at appeasing Mr. Trump, who has made clear that he believes the election was stolen from him and expects his legal team to keep fighting." Moreover, according to an unnamed insider, quoted by the newspaper, Trump himself understands that "the fight isn't winnable but characterized his feelings as: 'Let me have the fight.'"
