In the latest legal loss for President Trump’s campaign, the Supreme Court refused, without a single noted dissent, a request from Pennsylvania Republicans on Tuesday to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state.
This should put to rest the Trump legal team’s election fraud conspiracy theories. If there were any substance to the Pennsylvania GOP’s legal claims, the Supreme Court likely would have taken the case. But all nine justices, three of whom were appointed by Trump himself, seem to have agreed the case was not worth considering.
Trump’s allies argued the Supreme Court rejected the Pennsylvania GOP’s case because the justices wanted to avoid this debate. Such a claim ignores the fact that Justice Samuel Alito has already played a significant role in the election battle taking place in Pennsylvania. He has been overseeing the emergency requests in Pennsylvania’s election cases, which means he could have dealt with the Pennsylvania GOP’s request to halt the state’s certification himself. But he chose to refer the request to the full court, which responded with a firm, final answer: The election process must move forward.
If Alito had disagreed strongly with the court, or if Justices Clarence Thomas, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, or Neil Gorsuch disagreed with this decision, there would more than likely have been a noted dissent. That there was no dissent is telling, and the Trump campaign should see this for what it is — a sign that the president’s case will not succeed, even if he does manage to end up before the Supreme Court.
Trump’s supporters should also see the Supreme Court’s decision as evidence that the president’s legal team’s claims are weak at best and outright dishonest at worst. There is a reason the Trump campaign continues to lose. In fact, the Trump campaign has lost about 50 challenges to the presidential election over the past five weeks, with judges in eight states repeatedly tossing out the campaign’s legal claims as unsubstantiated conjecture based on little more than hearsay and conspiracy. And that’s because each legal claim filed by Trump and his allies lacks the only thing that matters in a court of law: evidence.
Despite having multiple opportunities to present its evidence before a judge, the Trump campaign has failed to do so. Yet, his legal team continues to claim the presidential election was stolen and that Trump is the rightful victor. To believe this, one would need to believe that the many judges, some of whom were appointed by Trump, who have heard the campaign’s cases across the country are actively aiding a criminal conspiracy of the highest order. One would also need to believe that Republican leaders in several states undermined the leader of their party in favor of a Democratic candidate. And now, this conspiracy must also include the Supreme Court, which is controlled by a 6-3 conservative majority.
In other words, the Trump campaign’s arguments are balderdash.
