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- The Trump campaign’s lawyers said in a statement that they are “thankful” to the judge who dismissed their Pennsylvania campaign lawsuit in a scathing opinion on Saturday.
- Judge Matthew Brann threw out the lawsuit and said it was attempting to disenfranchise 7 million people without providing any good reason to do so.
- Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis said the decision “turns out to help us in our strategy to get expeditiously to the US Supreme Court.”
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The Trump campaign said in a statement that they are “thankful” to the judge who dismissed their Pennsylvania campaign lawsuit in a scathing opinion on Saturday.
The lawsuit sought to block Pennsylvania from certifying the vote count, claiming election officials took part in an “improper scheme” to benefit President-elect Joe Biden, who won the state.
Judge Matthew Brann threw out the lawsuit and said it was an attempt to disenfranchise 7 million people without providing any good reason to do so.
“This Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpaid in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence,” he wrote.
Lawyers Jenna Ellis and Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s lawyer reportedly in charge of his election battles, tried to cast the loss as a win, saying in a statement the campaign is “thankful to the Obama-appointed judge for making this anticipated decision quickly.”
He said the campaign plans to appeal and that the decision "turns out to help us in our strategy to get expeditiously to the US Supreme Court."
"We are disappointed we did not at least get the opportunity to present our evidence at a hearing. Unfortunately the censorship continues," the statement said. "We hope that the Third Circuit will be as gracious as Judge Brann in deciding our appeal one way or the other as expeditiously as possible."
Trump has repeatedly said he would go to the Supreme Court in his efforts to fight the election results, though he has not been clear about why or what legal basis there is to do so.
But Business Insider's Jacob Shamsian reported some experts say the Supreme Court appears hesitant to get involved in election-related litigation.
Hours after the judge's decision, Sen. Pat Toomey became the latest in a growing number of prominent Republicans to acknowledge and congratulate Biden as president-elect.
"With today's decision by Judge Matthew Brann, a longtime conservative Republican whom I know to be a fair and unbiased jurist, to dismiss the Trump campaign's lawsuit, President Trump has exhausted all plausible legal options to challenge the result of the presidential race in Pennsylvania," Toomey said in a statement.