Aaron Blake of the Washington Post compiled several examples of how badly Trump’s legal teams are doing in courts across the country with their spurious lawsuits over the election results. The problem is three-fold: they have no actual evidence, the numbers are so small they wouldn’t impact the outcome of the election, and the judges aren’t putting up with their nonsense.
In Chatham County, as in Michigan, the Trump campaign cited supposed evidence that 53 late ballots may have been predated so they could be counted. Except two witnesses they called acknowledged under oath that they didn’t know whether the ballots were received after the deadline. And two others for the local board of elections testified that they were, in fact, received on time.
Judge James Bass dismissed the case in a one-sentence, eight-word ruling, saying, “I’m denying the request and dismissing the petition” and abruptly adjourned the hearing. He then elaborated in a written opinion, saying that “the Court finds that there is no evidence that the ballots referenced in the petition were received after 7:00 p.m. on election day, thereby making those ballots invalid. Additionally, there is no evidence that the Chatham County Board of Elections or the Chatham County Board of Registrars has failed to comply with the law.”
The common thread running through all of these is that Trump’s lawyers are regularly offering a significantly more watered-down version of Trump’s claims about rampant voter fraud — because they, unlike Trump, have to substantiate their claims. And as these exchanges show, it’s a rather thankless task that can quickly land them on a judge’s bad side.