Washington: President Trump has asked the Supreme Court to let him join a lawsuit by Texas seeking to throw out the voting results in four swing states he lost, litigation that also drew support from 17 other red states.
In a court filing Wednesday, Trump asked to intervene in the Texas lawsuit, the latest litigation to try to undo Joe Biden’s victory in the Nov. 3 election. In a separate brief, lawyers for 17 states led by Missouri’s Republican Attorney General Eric Schmitt also urged the nine justices to hear the case.
Efforts in the courts on behalf of Trump challenging the election results so far have failed, reports Reuters.
The lawsuit, announced on Tuesday by the Republican attorney general of Texas Ken Paxton, targeted four states that Trump lost to Biden after winning them in the 2016 election. Trump has falsely claimed he won re-election and has made baseless allegations of widespread voting fraud. Election officials at the state level have said they have found no evidence of such fraud.
Election law experts have said the Texas lawsuit stands little chance of success and lacks legal merit.
“Both procedurally and substantively, it’s a mess,” Justin Levitt, an election law professor at Loyola Law School in California, said of the Texas lawsuit. “There’s zero chance the court agrees to take the case.”
In addition to Missouri, the states joining Texas were: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia. All of the states were represented by Republican officials in the filing. All but three of the states have Republican governors.
