Ellis: 'Fight Not Over Yet,' State Legislatures and Alternate GOP Electoral College Delegates Are Key
Trump campaign senior legal adviser Jenna Ellis laid out the pathway to potentially secure rightful Electoral College victory for President Donald Trump, and it goes right through the legislatures of key swing states where Joe Biden currently leads in contested vote tallies
“Since Nov. 3, the mainstream media has tried to just say at every step of the way, ‘This is hopeless for Donald Trump. He should just concede, concede,’” Ellis told “American Thought Leaders” host Jan Jakielek during an interview posted on Wednesday.
“They have been trying to push Joe Biden through to the finish line, but this fight is not over yet. Not by a long shot,” she added to The Epoch Times host.
Ellis argued that despite the Electoral College vote that occurred on Monday in the 50 states, there is still time because the date of most significance is Jan. 6, when the vote is received and tallied in Congress.
She noted that in swing states the Trump campaign is legally contesting, Republican electors met and cast their votes for the president and Vice President Mike Pence.
“So although we have Dec. 14, just this past Monday, where the different slate of delegates came in those six states that we are challenging, the GOP delegates also showed up and cast their votes,” Ellis said.
“That’s happened before in U.S. history, where there have been two slates of delegates and there has been a controversy over the outcome of a particular state’s election and how they sent their delegates right up into the day where they go to Congress,” she continued.
.@JennaEllisEsq: “This fight is not over yet, and not by a long shot…There is still plenty of time for the state legislatures to do their constitutionally mandated job by making sure that the delegates that they send…are the correct slate.”
?WATCH?https://t.co/VlaYKUmcRB pic.twitter.com/Tj2Zle1GTH
— @JanJekielek’s American Thought Leaders ?? (@AmThoughtLeader) December 17, 2020
The ball is really in the court of these state legislatures, Ellis contended, citing the Constitution’s Article II, Section 1, which provides, “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives” in Congress.
Republican electors met on Monday in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, New Mexico and Michigan and voted for Trump and Pence.
Georgia GOP Chairman David Shafer tweeted, “Our action today preserves [Trump’s] rights under Georgia law.”
Had we not meet today and cast our votes, the President’s pending election contest would have been effectively mooted. Our action today preserves his rights under Georgia law.
— David Shafer (@DavidShafer) December 14, 2020
The Pennsylvania Republican Party explained its decision in a statement.
“At the request of the Trump campaign, the Republican presidential electors met today in Harrisburg to cast a conditional vote for Donald Trump and Mike Pence for President and Vice President respectively,” the statement read.
[firefly_poll]
“We took this procedural vote to preserve any legal claims that may be presented going forward,” said Bernie Comfort, Pennsylvania chair of the Trump campaign. “This was in no way an effort to usurp or contest the will of the Pennsylvania voters.”
The PA GOP cited the 1960 election, in which then-Vice President Richard Nixon was declared the winner in Hawaii, but Democratic electors met and cast their vote for Sen. John Kennedy “to preserve their intent in the event of future favorable legal outcomes.”
In the present election, should a favorable “non-appealable court order or other proceeding prescribed by law” recognize the Trump ticket as the true winner in Pennsylvania, the Republican electors are now on record voting for him, the party said.
Ellis believes the leaders of the Pennsylvania Senate and House already made the case why the current election results cannot be accepted in an amicus brief they filed in the Texas v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Supreme Court case.
“They agreed with Texas that their state’s laws in the administration of the 2020 election were not followed,” she said.
The brief in fact argues that many of the safeguards impacting the integrity of absentee ballots were removed unilaterally by Democrat Tom Wolf’s administration and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and lower courts, including the “evisceration” of signature matching requirements.
Additionally, Philadelphia election officials barred Republican Party representatives from being able to meaningfully observe ballot counting, as required by law, according to the brief.
“That gives them the basis through their investigations, their findings, all the testimony and evidence presented by [former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani] and myself at that hearing, for Pennsylvania to reclaim under Article II, section 1.2 of the U.S. Constitution, they can reclaim their authority to select the slate of delegates,” Ellis said.
Before our 11 Republican electors cast their votes for President @realDonaldTrump and Vice President @Mike_Pence, they paused to bow their heads in prayer to ask our Lord to watch over our nation and give our leaders wisdom and courage (Chairwoman @kelliwardaz led the prayer) ? pic.twitter.com/YdwLM1uMeL
— Arizona Republican Party (@AZGOP) December 14, 2020
“Once one state actually calls an electoral session and is willing to run that resolution to vote by simple majority and say, ‘We’re not going to allow corrupted, false certifications to prevail in terms of how we select our delegates’” the attorney stated. “If one state is willing to do this, I think others will follow.”
“These state legislators, there are a significant number of them in these swing states that want to do the right thing,” Ellis told Newsmax last week. “They want to exercise their Article II authority.”
