US President Donald Trump has petitioned the Supreme Court to allow him to join the case brought by Texas against the four states that said Democrat Joe Biden won the election, after 17 other states supported the lawsuit as well.
Trump filed a 39-page motion on Wednesday to “intervene” in the case, brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton earlier this week against Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, “in his personal capacity as candidate for re-election.”
To show standing, Trump argues that he has a direct stake in the outcome of the case, since the number of votes “affected by illegal conduct” of election officials in the four states “greatly exceeds the current margin” between him and Biden, and combined they have enough Electoral College votes to alter the outcome of the election.
The president announced the move earlier in the day via Twitter, calling the Texas case “the big one,” and saying that “many other states” would be joining as well. A few hours later, seventeen states filed an amicus brief to the court backing Paxton’s lawsuit.
Missouri was joined by Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia in arguing that their legitimate votes were “diluted” by the “unconstitutional administration of elections in other States,” and that other authorities in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin usurped the authority the US Constitution explicitly gave state legislators to improperly alter the voting rules and standards.
While the Texas case primarily focuses on alleged breaches of election laws and norms by the four states, it also references “expert analysis using a commonly accepted statistical test,” which points out that the probability of Biden winning the popular vote after Trump’s early lead on Election Day was “less than one in a quadrillion.”
Texas is asking the Supreme Court to declare that the four states administered their elections “in violation of the Electors Clause” and declare any Electoral College votes based on those results null and void unless the state legislatures review them and vote in a manner “that is consistent with the Constitution.”
Trump had the early lead in all four states, only for Biden to overtake him after large numbers of mail-in ballots flooded in over the next several days. Mainstream media have declared Biden the president-elect, but the Electoral College has yet to meet and confirm that. Trump has repeatedly alleged there was fraud in the vote, which both mainstream and social media have dismissed out of hand and labeled “false” or “disputed.”
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