President Trump's federal lawsuit in Pennsylvania is getting its day in court. As a recent article in the American Thinker explained:
The complaint filed in Pennsylvania by the Trump campaign is a superb piece of legal craftsmanship.
It was filed in federal court, not state. The gist is that some of the state's actions, and particularly the exclusion of Republican poll-watchers during the counting of hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots, violated federal constitutional requirements.
The point is obvious enough once one thinks of it, but it's brilliant all the same. It shifts the focus from state law, where a politicized Pennsylvania court has the last word, to federal law, where the U.S. Supreme Court rules.
After the campaign filed an amended complaint this weekend, the media began pushing the narrative that part of the lawsuit had been dropped when that was not the case:
The Washington Post forgot to read the complaint. Fake News. Poll Watchers, and the way they were treated, are a very big deal in the complaint! https://t.co/Rhc4RY0QSF
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 16, 2020
This story is completely erroneous. Our lawsuit in Pennsylvania absolutely still makes an issue of the 682,479 mail-in and absentee ballots that were counted in secret.
— Tim Murtaugh (@TimMurtaugh) November 16, 2020
To write that we had scrapped that argument requires not reading the amended complaint. https://t.co/39CvzAoIyl
Para 15 (now 11 in amended complaint). pic.twitter.com/MyzOecNzgK
— Jenna Ellis (@JennaEllisEsq) November 16, 2020
The Trump Campaign officially set the record straight on the issue earlier today:
On Sunday night, the Washington Post ran a complete mischaracterization of the Trump campaign’s litigation in Pennsylvania, erroneously claiming the campaign had dropped the claim of nearly 700,000 ballots processed illegally and in secret. The campaign did no such thing. In fact, because of a Friday ruling by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in an unrelated case, the campaign strategically decided to restructure its lawsuit to rely on claims of violations of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The claim that 682,479 ballots were improperly processed and counted is still very much part of the suit.
Tomorrow's hearing is scheduled before the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.