Trump says he will intervene in Texas election lawsuit
President Trump on Wednesday suggested he will intervene in a case brought by the state of Texas against other states alleging election fraud in yet another last-gasp effort to subvert the outcome of the presidential election.
"We will be INTERVENING in the Texas (plus many other states) case. This is the big one. Our Country needs a victory!" Trump tweeted.
It was not immediately clear if Trump planned to intervene in his personal capacity or if his campaign would get involved. A campaign spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Texas announced on Tuesday that it would be filing a lawsuit in the Supreme Court against four battleground states in an effort to halt presidential electors from finalizing President-elect Joe Biden's victory.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) alleged that the new voting processes in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin skewed the presidential election results and that electors should not be allowed to cast their votes for Biden as a result.
The Supreme Court has not yet indicated whether it will hear the case, which many experts characterized as unserious.
"It's a publicity stunt masquerading as a lawsuit. AG Paxton should be sanctioned for it," tweeted Rick Hasen, a law and political science professor at the University of California, Irvine. "It goes against the will of millions of voters. He's going for a pardon with Trump."
"It looks like we have a new leader in the 'craziest lawsuit filed to purportedly challenge the election' category," tweeted Steve Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
While the lawsuit may be unlikely to succeed, it is the latest attempt by Trump to convince his supporters that the election was "rigged" and "stolen" from him. His campaign and his allies have filed roughly 50 lawsuits in recent weeks over the election, with the vast majority getting dismissed for lack of standing.
Trump and his attorneys have argued in public that there is evidence of widespread fraud, but they have failed to produce any evidence of it in court.
Attorney General William Barr last week said the Department of Justice had yet to see any evidence of fraud that would change the outcome of the election.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a bid by Pennsylvania Republicans to nullify Biden's victory in the state. Each time a case has been rejected, Trump has moved on to another one, fundraising for his cause in the meantime.