The Trump campaign is accusing The Washington Post of publishing a “complete mischaracterization” of an election lawsuit against Pennsylvania over the state’s ballot counting process.
The Post ran a story on Sunday evening reporting that the Trump campaign had altered its lawsuit against Pennsylvania to throw out claims that the state blocked GOP observers from viewing the vote-counting process. The claim against the state sought to remove over 600,000 votes as invalid. According to the Post:
Trump’s attorneys filed a revised version of the lawsuit, removing allegations that election officials violated the Trump campaign’s constitutional rights by limiting the ability of their observers to watch votes being counted.
Trump and Rudolph W. Giuliani, his personal attorney, have said repeatedly that more than 600,000 votes in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh should be invalidated because of this issue.
Trump’s pared-down lawsuit now focuses on allegations that Republicans were illegally disadvantaged because some Democratic-leaning counties allowed voters to fix errors on their mail ballots. Counties have said this affected only a small number of votes.
The Trump campaign sent out a statement Monday morning challenging the Post’s story, asserting that the campaign did not drop the claims, only restructured its lawsuit. The revised lawsuit alleges that in a handful of counties across the state, poll watchers were blocked from viewing election workers count ballots among other activities.
“The Washington Post ran a complete mischaracterization of the Trump campaign’s litigation in Pennsylvania, erroneously claiming the campaign had dropped the claim of nearly 700,000 ballots processed illegally and in secret. The campaign did no such thing,” the Trump campaign said in a release. “In fact, because of a Friday ruling by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in an unrelated case, the campaign strategically decided to restructure its lawsuit to rely on claims of violations of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The claim that 682,479 ballots were improperly processed and counted is still very much part of the suit.”
The campaign then pointed to paragraph 4 of the lawsuit, which says:
Allegheny and Philadelphia Counties alone received and processed 682,479 mail-in and absentee ballots without review by the political parties and candidates. These are unprecedented numbers in Pennsylvania’s elections history. Rather than engaging in an open and transparent process to give credibility to Pennsylvania’s brand-new voting system, the processes were hidden during the receipt, review, opening, and tabulation of those 682,479 votes.
Trump campaign communications director ripped the Post in a statement slamming the outlet’s “fake news activists.”
“We are still arguing that 682,479 ballots were counted illegally, in secret,” said Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign’s director of communications. “Our poll watchers were denied meaningful access to watch the vote counting and we still incorporate that claim in our complaint. Unfortunately, fake news activists rushed to print their clickbait headlines, apparently without even reading the lawsuit. That’s lazy journalism at best, but more likely intentionally misleading.”
Related: Pennsylvania Judge Tosses Some Mail-In Ballots In Case Involving Deadline To Prove Identification