Several Republican Attorneys General have joined in a lawsuit challenging mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania related to the 2020 presidential election.
The most recent attorney general to join the lawsuit was Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who said in a statement that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s ruling “allowed absentee ballots to be counted without a legible postmark and overrode unambiguous state law passed by the Pennsylvania legislature.”
“While this did not occur in Kentucky, what happens in other states during a presidential election matters to Kentuckians because we are electing our President and Vice President,” Cameron continued. “Legal matters like the one involving Pennsylvania set a judicial precedent that not only affects this election, but future elections as well. My interest in this is not about courts dictating who wins and loses, but about transparency and rule of law issues that should give all Americans the confidence that the election was conducted fairly. Ultimately, we all have to accept the results, and it will be hard for some people to do that if they think issues like these go unexplored.”
Attorneys general from Kentucky, Missouri, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas joined in the lawsuit.
The Courier Journal reported that Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt indicated that “states had an interest in protecting the powers of a state legislature from being overridden by a state court and having the votes of their citizens being undermined in Pennsylvania.”
The news comes as Attorney General William Barr authorized federal prosecutors on Monday to pursue “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities from the election.
The media rushed to downplay Barr’s directive to U.S. attorneys by claiming that there was little-to-no evidence of any wrong doing. However, Barr made clear in his letter to federal officials that they were not to pursue cases involving “fanciful or far-fetched claims.”
“Nothing here should be taken as any indication that the Department has concluded that voting irregularities have impacted the outcome of any election,” Barr said. “Rather, I provide this authority and guidance to emphasize the need to timely and appropriately address allegations of voting irregularities so that all of the American people, regardless of their preferred candidate or party, can have full confidence in the results of our elections. The American people and the leaders they freely elect deserve nothing less.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) addressed the matter from the Senate floor on Monday, saying, “let’s have no lectures about how the President should immediately, cheerfully accept preliminary election results from the same characters who just spent four years refusing to accept the validity of the last election.”
“In late August, Secretary Hillary Clinton said, quote, ‘Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances… I think this is going to drag out, and… he will win if we don’t give an inch,’” McConnell continued. “That same month, Speaker Pelosi and the Democratic Leader both stated, quote, ‘[President Trump] needs to cheat to win.’ In October, when Speaker Pelosi was shopping some conspiracy theory about the Postal Service, she recklessly said, quote, ‘I have no doubt that the president… will lie, cheat, and steal, to win this election.’”
This report has been updated to include additional information.