Texas Defends Its SCOTUS Lawsuit in New Brief: We are “Likely to Prevail on the Merits”

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Dec 11, 2020   |   2:08PM   |   Washington, DC

Texas officials have filed a reply brief at the Supreme Court in response to legal papers filed by the four states it sued over election fraud. The states mostly focused on prior cases that lower courts have turned back but Texas says it is confident about its case and expects to “prevail on the merits.”

The Texas lawsuit asks the Supreme Court to delay the December 14 Electoral College vote and block the four states from casting their votes in the Electoral College for pro-abortion candidate Joe Biden.

Some 18 states have joined Texas in its bid to have the Supreme Court overturn Joe Biden’s election “victory” by throwing out the voting results from Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin along with 106 members of Congress.

“Defendant States do not seriously address grave issues that Texas raises, choosing to hide behind other court venues and decisions in which Texas could not participate and to mischaracterize both the relief that Texas seeks and the justification for that relief,” the Texas brief says in response to Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia Thursday. “An injunction should issue because Defendant States have not—and cannot—defend their actions.”

Texas says the states did nothing to disprove its central point — that each of the four unconstitutionally changed their election statutes in their judiciaries or executive branches, when only the legislature is allowed to make election law.

“Defendant States do not credibly dispute either that they changed election statutes via non-legislative means or that the Electors Clause preempts such changes,” the Texas brief says. “Accordingly, Texas is likely to prevail on the merits.”

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“Texas does not ask this Court to reelect President Trump, and Texas does not seek to disenfranchise the majority of Defendant States’ voters,” Texas’ brief says. “Texas asks this Court to recognize the obvious fact that Defendant States’ maladministration of the 2020 election makes it impossible to know which candidate garnered the majority of lawful votes. The Court’s role is to strike unconstitutional action and remand to the actors that the Constitution and Congress vest with authority for the next step.”

The Supreme Court is expected to take action on the case quickly.

Meanwhile, Congressman Mike Johnson, a pro-life Republican from Louisiana, personally asked his colleagues to sign on to the amicus brief and he got 105 members to do so.

“The simple objective of our brief is to affirm for the court (and our constituents back home) our serious concerns with the integrity of our election system,” Johnson wrote in his email to fellow Congressional members. “We are not seeking to independently litigate the particular allegations of fraud in our brief (this is not our place as amici). We will merely state our belief that the broad scope of the various allegations and irregularities in the subject states merits careful, timely review by the Supreme Court.”

“The purpose of our amicus brief will be to articulate this concern and express our sincere belief that the great importance of this issue merits a full and careful consideration by the court,” he said.

“Due in large part to those usurpations, the election of 2020 has been riddled with an unprecedented number of serious allegations of fraud and irregularities,” the Republicans said in their friend of the court brief.

The Texas lawsuit asks the Supreme Court to delay the December 14 Electoral College vote and block the four states from casting their votes in the Electoral College for pro-abortion candidate Joe Biden.

Some 18 states have joined Texas in its bid to have the Supreme Court overturn Joe Biden’s election “victory” by throwing out the voting results from Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

In a brief filed on Wednesday, lawyers for the states led by Missouri’s Republican Attorney General Eric Schmitt urged the nation’s highest court to take a look at serious allegations of election fraud.

In addition to Texas, the 18 states joining the lawsuit are: Alabama, Arizona Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia.

After the suit, President Donald Trump, as the presidential candidate, moved to intervene in the Texas v. Pennsylvania, et. al. action at the United States Supreme Court. The President intervened because his rights as a candidate are affected by the Defendant States’ failure to follow and enforce state election laws during the 2020 election.

“I’m honored that the President asked me to represent him in this matter. I think his intervention in this case strengthens an already very strong original action by the state of Texas,’ said attorney John Eastman.

Trump attorney Jenna Ellis added: “President Trump is fully committed to ensuring election integrity and fulfilling his oath to defend and protect the United States Constitution against state officials’ misconduct and violations of law that irredeemably compromised this election. We look forward to the Supreme Court resolving these important issues of election integrity that ultimately affect all Americans, and providing a remedy to the corruption that occurred.”

Texas has filed a lawsuit agaisnt four battleground states saying their loose election rules disenfranchises voters in the Lone Star State because they are fraught with fraud. Texas took the lawsuit directly to the Supreme Court saying those states violated the Elector’s Clause.

“The 2020 election suffered from significant and unconstitutional irregularities,” the case says.

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey issued a statement Wednesday about why he joined the lawsuit.

“Many Americans and West Virginians have seen their confidence in the electoral system undermined as they watch one report after another outlining the many, many problems with the 2020 elections. That must change,” he said.

“Today, I am announcing my support of Texas’ request before the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the many irregular, highly problematic and unconstitutional actions that have occurred in the states during the 2020 elections. We are joining a brief with a number of my colleagues, which will be filed at the U.S. Supreme Court this afternoon,” he added. “America and West Virginia deserve to get to the bottom of these really troubling issues. I urge the U.S. Supreme Court to carefully consider Texas’ and the states’ requests.”

Gov. Jim Justice said he supports the lawsuit.

“I’m sure our attorney general will make the right moves, and I’ll support what he comes up with,” Justice said. “If that’s his decision and if his decision is this is not proper and not right and everything then we support his decision.”

President Trump on Wednesday morning issued his support for the state of Texas and the more than 10 states that are supporting its lawsuit against four battleground states that have been accused of having election fraud that erroneously gave Joe Biden a supposed victory in the presidential election.

In filing the lawsuit, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the battleground states Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin did not follow proper election law and protocols and, as a result, disenfranchised Texas voters and the voters in other states.

“These elections in other states where state law was not followed … affects my voters because these are national elections, and so if there are fraudulent things or things that affect an election and state law is not followed as is required by the Constitution it affects our state,” Paxton told “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday. “It affects every state.”

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“We can’t go back and fix it, but we can say, OK, let’s transfer this to the legislature … and let them to decide the outcome of the election. That would be a valid constitutional situation,” Paxton continued.

Texas argues that these states violated the Electors Clause of the Constitution because they made changes to voting rules and procedures through the courts or through executive actions, but not through the state legislatures. Additionally, Texas argues that there were differences in voting rules and procedures in different counties within the states, violating the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. Finally, Texas argues that there were “voting irregularities” in these states as a result of the above.

“Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a justification, government officials in the defendant states of Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (collectively, ‘Defendant State’), usurped their legislatures’ authority and unconstitutionally revised their state’s election statutes,” Paxton’s complaint says. “They accomplished these statutory revisions through executive fiat or friendly lawsuits, thereby weakening ballot integrity.”

Texas is asking the Supreme Court to order the states to allow their legislatures to appoint their electors. It seeks to invalidate the 62 Electoral College votes from those four battleground states and award Trump a second term.

The lawsuit comes as the Supreme Court is weighing an election challenge from Pennsylvania.

Congressman Mike Kelly and Congressional candidate Sean Parnell filed a lawsuit two weeks ago to challenge the legality of mail-in ballots and the plaintiffs insist millions of mail-in ballots are not allowed by the state constitution. Now the U.S. Supreme Court has become involved and is requiring state officials to file legal briefs by tomorrow.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is overseeing that appeal and appears to be interested in taking up the case. Alito moved the deadline from Dec. 9 to Dec. 8 to meet the “safe harbor” deadline.

SCOTUS eventually decided against an emergency injunction but will still hear the case.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz says he would present oral arguments if their election fraud lawsuit appears in front of the nation’s highest court.