On December 8th, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin in the United States Supreme Court. According to Paxton’s official government website, he believes that these four states “exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to justify ignoring federal and state election laws and unlawfully enacting last-minute changes,” and that these last-minute changes were responsible for “skewing” the results of the presidential election on November 3rd.
Continuing, the post claims that Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin — states which are crucial to Biden’s presumed victory — had “flooded their people with unlawful ballot applications and ballots while ignoring statutory requirements as to how they were received, evaluated and counted.”
The lawsuit is being described by critics as a “Hail Mary play for President Donald Trump,” with Sen. Ben Sasse calling the lawsuit a “PR stunt.” However, over 100 GOP members of the House of Representatives disagree, filing an amicus brief supporting Texas’ case. Among these Republicans are Ohio’s Rep. Jim Jordan, Texas’ Rep. Dan Crenshaw, and Florida’s Matt Gaetz.
⚖️JUST IN: New amicus brief from 106 Republican House members in support of Texas' bid to overturn President-elect Joe Biden's win in the Supreme Court. Here they are👇 pic.twitter.com/QLN4jDfoto
— John Kruzel (@johnkruzel) December 10, 2020
On Wednesday, seventeen states “filed documents with the Supreme Court,” as Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia joined with Missouri to file an amicus brief supporting Texas.
The next day, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Utah “formally joined Texas in its Supreme Court suit.”
President Donald Trump has also announced that the federal government would intervene on the side of Texas, describing the suit as “the big one.”
We will be INTERVENING in the Texas (plus many other states) case. This is the big one. Our Country needs a victory!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2020
In response, the attorneys general for Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin have asked the Supreme Court to reject the lawsuit with “blistering language,” calling the attempt “an affront to democracy and the rule of law.” According to the New York Times, “legal experts” have criticized the basis of the suit, citing that the case relies on the claim that “Texas can dictate how other states run their elections because voting irregularities elsewhere harm the rights of Texans.”
According to the Texas Tribune, this case “might prove just as do-or-die” for Texas Attorney General Paxton, which is “facing another set of criminal allegations after eight of his top aides said they believed he broke the law by using the agency’s resources to do favors for a political donor.”
The nine Supreme Court justices who will determine the outcome of this lawsuit are expected to “pick up their phones and dial in to the court’s regular closed-door conference” on Friday morning. The Supreme Court is “expected to decide quickly” whether this “long-shot lawsuit” will succeed in invalidating Joe Biden’s assumed electoral victory.
Ian Haworth is host of The Ian Haworth Show and The Truth in 60 Seconds. Follow him on Twitter at @ighaworth.