Trump Campaign Says It Hasn't Withdrawn Its Pa. Claims, Still Wants Some Mail-In Ballots Disqualified
PITTSBURGH (KDKA/AP) -- After new court filings over the weekend led some to think the Trump campaign was backing away from its claims of improprieties in Pennsylvania's election, the campaign said on Monday that it still wants thousands of votes disqualified.
On Sunday, the Trump campaign amended its federal lawsuit by striking out a number of its claims against Allegheny County and five other counties that voted for Joe Biden.
Lawyers against Trump saw a significant concession.
"They're not even alleging fraud. There's no evidence of it, not even an allegation of it. What they are saying is that there are all these improprieties," said Vic Walczak, the legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, which represents parties to this lawsuit.
"Bottom line is that we are not giving up any claims. We have not withdrawn anything," senior Trump legal advisor Jenna Ellis told KDKA political editor Jon Delano.
Ellis said nothing changes. The campaign wants all mail-in ballots in Allegheny County and some other counties, nearly 700,000 ballots, disqualified.
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"We have to deal with 700,000 ballots that are now illegal because of what the election officials have done in Pennsylvania," Ellis said.
Ellis says because these counties did not follow proper procedures in the vote counting, a claim strongly denied by local election officials, none of these mail-in votes should be counted.
"That's the correct remedy because we don't know that all 700,000 — or more precisely, 682,777, right — that all of these were legally cast ballots," said Ellis.
But ACLU attorney Walczak says the Trump campaign has offered no specific evidence that one mail-in ballot, let alone all of them, were illegal.
"The remedy that the Trump campaign wants is to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters who did absolutely nothing wrong," says Walczak. "This is preposterous on so many levels."
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign switched up its lawyers in the case Monday evening. Exiting is Linda Kerns, a Philadelphia lawyer who has handled a number of lawsuits for the campaign. Replacing her is Marc Scaringi, a Harrisburg-area lawyer who volunteered on Trump's 2016 campaign, is a conservative activist who hosts a radio talk show and ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 2012.
Will those who voted by mail in Allegheny County lose their vote? The next step in this particular case is on Tuesday before a federal judge in Williamsport.
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