Outgoing US President Donald Trump suffered a triple of legal setbacks on Friday, even as he continues to make his case that the election was ‘rigged’ and that he will prevail.
The latest bad news for the president came in Michigan.
There, a judge denied the Trump campaign’s request to stop the counting of ballots in Wayne County, which includes Detroit.
In addition to ruling against Trump, Wayne County Circuit Judge Timothy Kenny called the campaign’s case ‘not credible.’
According to Judge Kenny: ‘No formal challenges were filed.
“However, sinister, fraudulent motives were ascribed to the process and the city of Detroit.
“Plaintiff’s interpretation of events is incorrect and not credible.’
In Arizona, Trump’s lawyers abandoned a suit seeking a hand count of ballots after a series of networks called the race for Biden.
Biden’s lead exceeds the number of outstanding ballots now, and dropping the suit acknowledges the state will be in Biden’s column.
And in Pennsylvania, a law firm representing the Trump campaign in its claims of fraud, withdrew from the case.
The Ohio-based Porter Wright Morris & Arthur had brought the suit claiming Pennsylvania’s ‘two-tiered’ voting system was illegal.
Its expansive case called into question millions of votes cast by Pennsylvania residents who voted by mail in accordance with state law.
The firm faced a backlash for its legal work from the Lincoln Project, a group of Republicans that worked to defeat Trump, for seeking to ‘overturn the will of the American people.’
Amid the legal retreats and defeats, Trump suffered more glaring losses on the electoral map.
TV networks on Friday afternoon called the closely contested state of Georgia for Democrat Joe Biden.
This took his electoral college votes to 306.
However, the same networks projected Trump to be the winner in North Carolina, giving him 232 votes.
The tally exactly mirrored in reverse the 2016 election result between Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Biden has now effectively flipped almost all the battleground states won by Trump
