WASHINGTON — After Donald Trump claimed victory in the early-morning hours after election night in 2020, his campaign and supporters turned to the courts to make that claim a reality. The Trump campaign and surrogates began filing lawsuits the very same day, challenging the results on a variety of grounds well before the final votes were counted.
The legal process and tactics may provide insight into how Trump or his allies could launch similar efforts should he lose again this time.
Over the remainder of November and into December, Trump and his Republican allies filed dozens of lawsuits in key swing states that, if successful, would have given Trump the Electoral College votes needed to remain in the White House. Their efforts stretched from local county courts all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and were supported by solo practitioners and state attorneys general alike.
Of the more than 60 lawsuits filed in the post-election period, Trump obtained a favorable ruling in only one case — the remainder were eventually either dismissed, settled or voluntarily withdrawn.
Approximately 12 hours after Trump declared victory in a 2 a.m. speech from the White House, the campaign filed lawsuits seeking to stop the counts in Michigan and Georgia. Later that day, a third lawsuit was filed in Pennsylvania seeking to prevent voters from “curing” mail-in ballots that lacked proof of identification.
More lawsuits from the campaign and Republican allies swiftly followed in those states and other heated battlegrounds. In Arizona, voters and the Trump campaign filed a lawsuit alleging thousands of people in Maricopa County had their ballots disqualified because of ink-bleed caused by Sharpies. In Nevada, Trump electors sued alleging that faulty signature matching machines cast doubt on over 100,000 Clark County mail-in votes. In Wisconsin, Trump filed a lawsuit alleging widespread voter fraud and demanding a recount, which ultimately reaffirmed Joe Biden’s victory in the state.
Over the following days and weeks, all these lawsuits ended in losses for Trump, with the exception of his initial lawsuit in Pennsylvania. That resulted in an order finding that the Pennsylvania secretary of state overstepped by extending the deadline for voters to provide missing proof of identification for mail-in ballots received after Election Day and enjoining counties from counting any ballots “cured” during that time. Even with that ruling, Biden still won Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes.
On Nov. 19, 2020, nearly two weeks after all major media outlets had called the election for Biden, Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis held a press conference in Washington, D.C., to present evidence they claimed showed widespread fraud and election interference by foreign countries.
“The number of voter fraud cases in Philadelphia could fill a library,” Giuliani said.
“What we are really dealing with here, and uncovering more by the day, is the massive influence of communist money through Venezuela, Cuba and likely China in the interference with our elections here in the United States,” Powell said.
Powell’s claims at that press conference went too far even for Trump, who behind the scenes dismissed her as “crazy” and “unhinged,” according to filings in special counsel Jack Smith’s criminal election interference case against Trump.
The rate of new lawsuits slowed significantly in December, but Trump and his allies hadn’t given up. One week into the month, Texas sought leave at the U.S. Supreme Court to file a lawsuit against Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin arguing that officials in those states had made illegal changes to election laws and again raising allegations of fraud. Seventeen Republican attorneys general would go on to add their support to Texas’ case. The justices ultimately declined to hear the case, stating that Texas had not shown a “judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections.”
The Supreme Court, with the exception of justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, never showed any real appetite for taking up other election cases that rose to their level. The justices disposed of a handful of post-election challenges from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin with no further explanation in an order a month after Biden was inaugurated.
“These cases provide us with an ideal opportunity to address just what authority nonlegislative officials have to set election rules, and to do so well before the next election cycle,” Thomas wrote in a dissent. “The refusal to do so is inexplicable.”
The legal efforts to keep Trump in power had failed, but the ramifications of these challenges would continue to unfold for their participants over the following years. The federal indictment against Trump mentions these baseless lawsuits as proof of his corrupt intent to remain in power despite knowing he lost the election. Giuliani has been disbarred in New York and D.C., indicted in Georgia and Arizona and has been ordered to turn over his Manhattan apartment and other property to two Georgia election workers he defamed.
Powell and Ellis were indicted in Georgia and have both pleaded guilty. Ellis was also indicted in Arizona and has since agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in exchange for her charges being dropped. And dozens of ethics complaints against local attorneys who filed election challenges are still pending nationwide.
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