McEnany: Texas' US Supreme Court Filing Single Most Important Document of 2020 Election
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany described Texas’ filing of a case at the U.S. Supreme Court against Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin as a “big” development in the post-election court challenges being waged on behalf of President Donald Trump.
The Constitution grants the Supreme Court original jurisdiction in the matter since it is a case between two or more states.
CNBC reported 17 states had signed on to a motion expressing support for the suit as of Wednesday afternoon.
Texas is calling on the high court to block Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin from casting their Electoral College vote on Dec. 14, claiming they failed to follow their election laws as required by the U.S. Constitution.
The result in each state was significant election irregularities and tallies that cannot be trusted, according to the filing.
“Voters who cast lawful ballots cannot have their votes diminished by states that administered their 2020 presidential elections in a manner where it is impossible to distinguish a lawful ballot from an unlawful ballot,” states the complaint, which was filed late Monday night.
Texas v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania “is the single most important document of the 2020 election,” McEnany told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Tuesday.
“Everything you and I have discussed over the last few weeks, the case here in Pennsylvania, the case here in Wisconsin, this is all combined in a succinct, very well-sourced, footnoted document, where you have Supreme Court-barred attorneys going before the Supreme Court saying, ‘These are the facts. These are the truths. We’ve separated fact from fiction and here it is,’” she said.
“As this case says, ‘Either the Constitution matters or it’s just a piece of parchment in the National Archives,'” McEnany added.
The White House Press Secretary contended that Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin lowered their standards regarding the handling of mail-in ballots.
McEnany offered the example of Georgia, which she said had a rejection rate for mail-in ballots that was 17 times lower than the rejection rate in 2016.
According to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s Supreme Court filing, there were 1,305,659 absentee mail-in ballots submitted in 2020, of which only 4,786, or 0.37 percent, were rejected.
“In contrast, in 2016, the 2016 rejection rate was 6.42% with 13,677 absentee mail-in ballots being rejected out of 213,033 submitted,” the complaint reads.
“If you had the same rejection rate as in 2016 in Georgia, we’d expect it to be higher, but if we just had the same that would be a net gain of 25,587 votes for President Trump, more than double the margin he would need in Georgia,” where just 12,670 votes separate Trump and Democrat Joe Biden, McEnany said.
[firefly_poll]
Regarding all four states, Texas’ complaint points to alleged violations of the Electors Clause of Article II of the U.S. Constitution, which gives state legislatures sole power to designate how presidential electors will be chosen, as well as the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection and due process under the law, as the basis for the suit.
“Here is what we know. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a justification, government officials in the defendant states of Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (collectively, ‘Defendant States’), usurped their legislatures’ authority and unconstitutionally revised their state’s election statutes,” the document reads.
“They accomplished these statutory revisions through executive fiat or friendly lawsuits, thereby weakening ballot integrity. Finally, these same government officials flooded the Defendant States with millions of ballots to be sent through the mails, or placed in drop boxes, with little or no chain of custody and, at the same time, weakened the strongest security measures protecting the integrity of the vote — signature verification and witness requirements.”
McEnany highlighted what she said was the improbability of a Biden win in the four states in question given Trump’s lead election night.
“What this lawsuit does, it looks at those anomalies and here’s what it finds: It finds that the chances of Biden coming from as far behind as he was at 3 a.m. on election night, the chances of that are one in one quadrillion.”
“The chances of him prevailing in all four of the states, where he was so far behind, the chances of that are one in a quadrillion to the fourth power,” she said.
Texas’ complaint points to specific issues regarding mail-in and absentee ballots that put each individual state’s vote tally into doubt.
For example in Pennsylvania, 9,005 ballots had no mailed date, while 58,221 were returned before their mailed date, and the total number of ballots returned only a day after they were mailed was 51,200, the lawsuit said.
“These nonsensical numbers alone total 118,426 ballots and exceed Mr. Biden’s margin of 81,660 votes over President Trump,” the document reads.
From Texas:
“Our Country stands at an important crossroads. Either the Constitution matters and it must be followed, even when some officials consider it inconvenient or out of date, or it is simply a piece of parchment on display… We ask the Court to choose the former.”
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— Jenna Ellis (@JennaEllisEsq) December 8, 2020
Michigan also had troubling absentee ballots issues, the suit said.
“The Wayne County Statement of Votes Report lists 174,384 absentee ballots out of 566,694 absentee ballots tabulated (about 30.8%) as counted without a registration number for precincts in the City of Detroit,” according to the Texas complaint.
“The number of votes not tied to a registered voter by itself exceeds Vice President Biden’s margin of 146,007 votes by more than 28,377 votes.
“The extra ballots cast most likely resulted from the phenomenon of Wayne County election workers running the same ballots through a tabulator multiple times, with Republican poll watchers obstructed or denied access, and election officials ignoring poll watchers’ challenges, as documented by numerous declarations.”
Two members of Wayne County’s Board of Canvassers refused to certify the results in part because 71 percent of Detroit’s Absent Voter Counting Board were unbalanced, “i.e., the number of people who checked in did not match the number of ballots cast — without explanation,” the suit said.
In light of these facts and many more offered, Texas called on the Supreme Court to “Declare that any electoral college votes cast by such presidential electors appointed in Defendant States Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin are in violation of the Electors Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and cannot be counted.”
Texas further sought that the justices “authorize, pursuant to the Court’s remedial authority, the Defendant States to conduct a special election to appoint presidential electors.”
Trump fully supports Texas’ suit and announced Wednesday his campaign plans to intervene.
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
“We will be INTERVENING in the Texas (plus many other states) case. This is the big one,” the president tweeted, “Our Country needs a victory!”
The Supreme Court has given Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin until Thursday afternoon at 3 p.m. to respond to the Texas complaint.
