President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign has launched a multi-state legal battle in its efforts to secure a second White House term over Democratic challenger Joe Biden. Court actions have been brought in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia, and the campaign has announced a similar one in Nevada. The campaign has also said it plans to seek a recount in Wisconsin. These battleground states, along with Arizona and North Carolina, are under intense scrutiny as former Vice President Joe Biden inches closer to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to secure the presidency. USA TODAY is tracking developments in the legal battle for the election. Keep refreshing this page for updates.
Trump campaign claims nonresidents voted in Nevada
Trump’s campaign and the Nevada Republican Party plan to file a lawsuit claiming as many as 10,000 people in Nevada cast a ballot despite no longer living there.
The suit, announced during a Thursday morning press conference in front of the Clark County Elections Department in Las Vegas, comes as Trump trailed Biden by about 8,000 votes in early returns in Nevada.
“We warned for the last few weeks we could end up in a situation where Nevada decides the presidency,” said Adam Laxalt, Nevada’s former attorney general and Trump’s campaign co-chair in the state. “We’re asking for emergency relief. We’re asking for the judge to stop the counting of improper votes.”
— James DeHaven, Reno Gazette-Journal
Rhetoric heats up on legal battles
The president took to his favorite medium Thursday morning to hail his campaign’s legal onslaught.
“All of the recent Biden claimed States will be legally challenged by us for Voter Fraud and State Election Fraud,” Trump tweeted, claiming “plenty of proof.” But as with his prior claims of widespread voter fraud, he provided no evidence.
Biden campaign attorney Bob Bauer, meanwhile, told reporters that Trump’s lawsuits will fail. He said they are only designed to “create an opportunity for them to message falsely what is happening in the election process.”
Barry Burden, director of the University of Wisconsin’s Elections Research Center, said there doesn’t appear to be “a coherent theme” to the Trump legal strategy.
“In one place they are asking for the count to be stopped; in another they are asking for the counting to continue,” he said. “But the burden is on the plaintiff (Trump) to prove that they have been harmed in some way. Now that all of the voting is done, I don’t know what the harm is.
“Maybe they can find an argument, but right now it’s still nebulous.”
— David Jackson and Kevin Johnson
Judge dismisses Georgia suit claiming late ballots were mixed with others
A Georgia Court on Thursday dismissed a Trump campaign lawsuit that accused the Chatham County Board of Elections of improperly intermingling ineligible ballots with valid ones.
Justin Clark, Trump’s deputy campaign manager, had said that a Republican poll observer saw 53 late absentee ballots “illegally added to a stack of on-time absentee ballots in Chatham County.”
But after hearing from the chairman of the county’s board of registrars, a judge dismissed the case, ruling there was no evidence the law had been broken.
Chairman Colin McRae told the judge the 53 ballots were received before the 7 p.m. deadline on Election Day. “I looked at all 53, and all 53 were timely received,” he said.
McRae said 41 absentee ballots came in after the deadline and have been held in a secure location. Georgia law requires that late ballots be held, unopened, and eventually discarded with other ballots.
—Will Peebles and Kevin McCoy
Trump camp vows to ‘keep fighting’ in Pennsylvania
Trump’s attorneys claimed in a Pennsylvania court that one of their observers in Philadelphia wasn’t allowed close enough to ballot processing. They lost at the entry level court, but filed an appeal and a judge weighed in Thursday morning.
Trump lawyer Pam Bondi said on Fox Business Network that an appellate judge entered an order “saying that we are to be immediately let in that convention center with 6-foot distancing of all aspects of that vote counting effective immediately so we can observe these votes being counted.”
Trump’s campaign aides claimed the ruling allows them to better observe the vote counting in Philadelphia, and they threatened to be on the watch for what they called improper ballots.
“It guarantees we’re gonna be able to watch the ballots being counted,” said Trump deputy campaign manager Justin Clark.
Advisers scheduled the conference call to insist they have not given up in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, all states Trump needs to win if he is to retain the presidency.
“We are going to keep fighting for this election,” campaign manager Bill Stepien said.
— David Jackson and Kevin McCoy
Michigan lawyer and GOP poll-watcher alleges counting misconduct
A lawyer who worked Tuesday’s election as a Republican poll challenger is alleging ballot counting misconduct in Detroit, based on an interaction she said she had with an election worker at TCF Center, the location in the city where absentee ballots were counted.
The allegation was filed Thursday in support of the Trump campaign’s lawsuit seeking to stop vote-counting in Michigan. The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the Michigan Court of Claims, sought to temporarily stop the counting of votes in the state.
— Dave Boucher and Paul Egan
Trump camp tries Supreme Court on balloting deadline
Trump’s campaign is pursuing a few legal battles in Pennsylvania. It moved to intervene in last week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision letting stand a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that upheld a three-day extension of the deadline by which mail ballots must be received. The extension was not part of new voting regulations that Pennsylvania lawmakers enacted last year.
Absentee and mail ballots received after the polls closed in Pennsylvania on Tuesday were to be segregated from those received earlier to allow for court challenges.
In another suit, Trump’s campaign alleges Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kate Boockvar improperly changed the state deadline by which first-time voters must provide identification in order to vote absentee or by mail.
Trump threatens recount in Wisconsin
Biden was projected as the winner in Wisconsin on Wednesday, hours after Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien announced plans to seek a recall. “There have been reports of irregularities in several Wisconsin counties which raise serious doubts about the validity of the results. The President is well within the threshold to request a recount and we will immediately do so,” he said.
If the race stays within 1 percentage point, the losing candidate can force a recount. If the margin is larger than that, there’s no chance for one.
Before any decision could be made on a recount, the official results need to be finalized, which could take a couple weeks, said Barry Burden, director of the University of Wisconsin’s Elections Research Center.
“I can’t imagine a recount modifying the result in any substantial way,” Burden said, even though the margin is slim.
In 2016, Wisconsin election officials conducted a statewide recount following Trump’s slim victory over Hillary Clinton. Of the more than 3 million votes cast, only 131 ballots were reassigned or disqualified, Burden said.
-Kevin Johnson
Michigan suit seeks to halt counting
The Trump campaign’s lawsuit in Michigan alleges it has not gotten adequate access to areas in election boards where ballots are being counted, according to the filing and a statement from Stepien. The statement did not specify where that was a problem.
“President Trump’s campaign has not been provided with meaningful access to numerous counting locations to observe the opening of ballots and the counting process, as guaranteed by Michigan law,” Stepien said in a news release.
Michigan law allows observers from opposing campaigns to monitor vote counting. This is a normal part of the election process, intended to give both parties the opportunity to ensure the law is followed when people vote and ballots are tabulated.
“We have filed suit today in the Michigan Court of Claims to halt counting until meaningful access has been granted. We also demand to review those ballots which were opened and counted while we did not have meaningful access,” the statement said.
