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Trump loses three cases in one day: Judges toss GOP election lawsuits in Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania as president's lawyers continue cries of voter fraud and insist he can still win

  President Donald Trump and his allies lost court rulings in three states on Thursday in their effort to stop President-elect Joe Biden fro...

 President Donald Trump and his allies lost court rulings in three states on Thursday in their effort to stop President-elect Joe Biden from taking office, underscoring their dwindling options even as they continued to claim a viable path to victory.

In Georgia, a judge appointed by Trump denied a request by Lin Wood, a conservative lawyer, to halt certification of Biden's victory in the state. The lawsuit alleged Georgia election officials improperly changed the process for handling absentee ballots.

'To halt the certification at literally the eleventh hour would breed confusion and disenfranchisement that I find have no basis in fact and law,' said US District Judge Steven Grimberg in Atlanta during a court hearing.


Meanwhile a state judge in Arizona also tossed a Republican-backed lawsuit seeking to stop Phoenix officials from certifying Biden as the winner - and said the suit could not be reworked and brought again.  

And in Pennsylvania, a state judge rejected the Trump campaign's bid to invalidate about 2,200 ballots in Bucks County, near Philadelphia, over purported defects such as missing 'secrecy envelopes'.

The trio of losses came as Trump's legal advisers, led by his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, drilled down on their unsubstantiated voter fraud claims and laid out what they said was a path to victory during a fiery press conference in Washington on Thursday. 

President Donald Trump and his allies lost court rulings in three states on Thursday in their effort to stop President-elect Joe Biden from taking office, underscoring their dwindling options even as they continued to claim a viable path to victory

President Donald Trump and his allies lost court rulings in three states on Thursday in their effort to stop President-elect Joe Biden from taking office, underscoring their dwindling options even as they continued to claim a viable path to victory

The trio of losses came as Trump's legal advisers, led by his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, drilled down on their unsubstantiated voter fraud claims and laid out what they said was a path to victory during a fiery press conference in Washington on Thursday (pictured)

The trio of losses came as Trump's legal advisers, led by his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, drilled down on their unsubstantiated voter fraud claims and laid out what they said was a path to victory during a fiery press conference in Washington on Thursday (pictured) 

Trump's strategy for retaining power is focused increasingly on persuading Republican legislators to intervene on his behalf in battleground states Biden won, three people familiar with the effort told Reuters.

The campaign's efforts have become increasingly frantic following a string of defeats in the past week as more than a dozen of its cases across multiple states were denied or pulled.  

The judge who handed down Georgia's ruling on Thursday appeared to acknowledge the mounting desperation, calling the suit that Wood filed in his capacity as an average voter 'creative', but saying that didn't give him a basis to sue.  

'There is no doubt that the right to vote, even an individual's right to vote is sacrosanct,' Judge Steven Grimberg in the Northern District of Georgia said. But, he added, that 'doesn't mean that individual voters have the right to dictate' how their vote is counted.  


Wood's suit seeking to stop the certification of votes accused Georgia's Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger of harming him as a voter by agreeing to a March settlement agreement on signature matching in ballots.  

Georgia's assistant attorney general Russell Willard dismissed Wood's claims as an attempt to 'change the rules at the end of the game in order to alter the score'.  

Willard also said that ruling in favor of Wood would result in 'the largest disenfranchisement in Georgia since the abolition of the poll tax and the vestiges of Jim Crow'.   

Judge Grimberg sided with Willard, noting how Wood waited eight months to challenge Raffensperger's March settlement agreement until after the election was called for Biden.  

'It is well established that garden-variety election disputes do not rise to the level of a constitutional deprivation,' the judge said. 

'The fact that the candidate or candidates that this plaintiff voted for… did not prevail in an election does not meet the legal standard of harm, much less irreparable harm.' 

Georgia is set to certify that Biden won its 16 electoral college votes on Friday, after Raffensberger announced that a hand-audit of ballots had confirmed the results.  

Trump supporters waving banners and flags rally for a 'stop the steal' protest outside the State Capitol in Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday

Trump supporters waving banners and flags rally for a 'stop the steal' protest outside the State Capitol in Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday 

Disenfranchisement was also at the center of Thursday's ruling in Pennsylvania, where the Trump campaign sought to exclude more than 2,000 ballots for technical reasons. 

Judge Robert Baldi of the Bucks County Court of Common Pleas ordered local election officials to count all of those ballots because there was no evidence of fraud.  

'It must be noted that the parties specifically stipulated in their comprehensive stipulation of facts that there exists no evidence of any fraud, misconduct, or any impropriety with respect to the challenged ballots,' Judge Baldi wrote in his ruling. 

'There is nothing in the record and nothing alleged that would lead to the conclusion that any of the challenged ballots were submitted by someone not qualified or entitled to vote in this election.

'At no time did Petitioners present evidence or argument to the contrary.'  

The Trump campaign still has one federal lawsuit pending in Pennsylvania, but the judge overseeing that case expressed skepticism about the lawyers' arguments earlier this week.  

In Pennsylvania, a state judge rejected the Trump campaign's bid to invalidate about 2,200 ballots in Bucks County, near Philadelphia, over purported defects

In Pennsylvania, a state judge rejected the Trump campaign's bid to invalidate about 2,200 ballots in Bucks County, near Philadelphia, over purported defects

The Arizona case that was thrown out on Thursday had been filed by the state's Republican party, which had asked Judge John Hannah to order a new audit of ballots in Maricopa County, where the majority of Arizonans live, arguing it had been conducted in a manner that violated state law.

Judge Hannah did not explain why he was denying the request but said he would issue a lengthier decision soon.

The Arizona Republican Party said in a statement that it had sought 'judicial clarification' of a law relating to determining a sample for a post-election audit of ballots. 

The statement said the dispute should be clarified through future legislation.

The Biden campaign praised Judge Hannah's decision, calling the lawsuit 'frivolous and rightfully dismissed'.  

'Arizona's election was well-run and transparent, and far-right fringes of the Arizona Republican Party should stop trying to undermine Arizonans' faith in free and fair elections,' said Geoff Burgan, communications director for the Biden campaign in Arizona.   

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