12th December, 2020
By Bayo Onanuga
Outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump made desperate efforts to make the U.S. Supreme Court justices accede to the prayer of Texas to block electors in four battleground states.
This he did by sheer barefaced scaremongering on Twitter, spreading lies about President-elect Joe Biden’s plan to pack US apex court.
In one tweet, he urged the court to rule in his favour to save America from what he claimed will be a scandal ‘plagued mess for year come”.
“It is much easier for the Supreme Court of the United States to follow the Constitution and do what everybody knows has to be done. They must show great Courage & Wisdom. Save the USA!!!”, he wrote.
One hour later, Trump was back on twitter, with a direct message to the justices:
“Now it turns out that the Democrats want the Pack the Court with 26 Justices. This would be terrible, and must be stopped. Even Justice RBG was strongly opposed!”.
Six hours after, he engaged in scare mongering again, reducing the number of judges the Biden administration would appoint.
“If the two Senators from Georgia should lose, which would be a horrible thing for our Country, I am the only thing that stands between “Packing the Court” (last number heard, 25), and preserving it. I will not, under any circumstances, Pack the Court!”
He added: “If the Supreme Court shows great Wisdom and Courage, the American People will win perhaps the most important case in history, and our Electoral Process will be respected again!”.
However, all his seductive tweets failed to gain the attention of the justices, as the case filed by Texas was rejected.
Texas long-shot lawsuit filed by its attorney-general Ken Paxton and backed by President Donald Trump sought to throw out voting results in four states.
But the justices in a brief order said Texas did not have legal standing to bring the case against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The case was filed on Tuesday by the Republican attorney general of Texas, a Trump ally. The Republican president on Wednesday filed a motion to intervene and become a plaintiff.
The Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority includes three justices appointed by Trump and none of them commented in the unsigned order.
Before the Nov. 3 election, Trump said he expected its outcome to be decided by the Supreme Court.
“Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections,” the court’s order said.
Two of the court’s conservatives, Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas, said they would have allowed Texas to sue but would not have blocked the four states from finalising their election results.
There was no immediate response from the White House. And no tweet from Trump yet.
A Biden spokesman said it was “no surprise” the high court rejected “baseless attempts” to deny Trump lost the election.
“Our nation’s highest court saw through this seditious abuse of our electoral process,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said on Twitter.
The four states in a filing with the court on Thursday asked the justices to reject the lawsuit, which they said had no factual or legal grounds.
Trump’s campaign and his allies already had lost in numerous lawsuits in state and federal courts challenging the election results.
Trump has falsely claimed he won the election and has made baseless allegations of widespread voting fraud and a system “rigged” against him.
State election officials have said they have found no evidence of such fraud.
Lawyers for Trump and his allies have failed to present evidence in court of the type of fraud he has alleged.