President Donald Trump’s attempt to upturn the victory of Joe Biden, his Democratic opponent in U.S presidential election again failed on Friday as a federal appeals court turned down his request for an emergency injunction to overturn the certification of Pennsylvania’s election results.
In the lawsuit, Trump’s campaign had asked the court to stop the certification of Pennsylvania’s results over claims that Republicans were not allowed in some Democratic-leaning areas to fix administrative errors on their mail ballots.
But the result has been certified by the Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar on Tuesday, thus officially indicating that Trump lost the election to Biden by over 81,000 votes.
“Voters, not lawyers, choose the President. Ballots, not briefs, decide elections,” the the Third Circuit Court of Appeals said in a scathing 21-page judgment while declaring that the Trump campaign’s challenge of a U.S. District Court’s decision had “no merit.”
Reports indicated that the judgment was written by Judge Stephanos Bibas, who was appointed to the court by Trump. The two other Republican-appointed judges in a unanimous also endorsed the judgment.
“Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here,” Bibas wrote.
Trump’s campaign had appealed to the Third Circuit after the district court last weekend dismissed its federal lawsuit against Pennsylvania election authorities and rejected the campaign’s request to be allowed to revise the suit to add more allegations, Washington Post reports.
The Judge also noted in his decision on Friday that Trump’s campaign “never claims fraud or that any votes were cast by illegal voters,” citing the fact that during a hearing on the lawsuit, Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, had said it was “not a fraud case.”
According to the granting Trump’s “grossly disproportionate” request to throw out the results would be “drastic and unprecedented, disenfranchising a huge swath of the electorate and upsetting all down-ballot races too.”
However, responding to Friday’s appeals court ruling, Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis said they plan to seek a U.S. Supreme Court review of the case.
Friday’s decision by the appeals court technically dealt with the Trump campaign’s challenge of the lower court’s refusal to allow it to amend its lawsuit. Giuliani wanted to refile the suit, adding allegations that official Republican observers were not allowed to watch votes being counted. (Trump’s lawyers had previously said in court that some were allowed to observe.)