President Trump launches legal battle

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Christian Datoc

President Donald Trump hopes to regain election momentum from former Vice President Joe Biden with a series of lawsuits.

The Trump campaign filed suits in three states on Wednesday — Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania — and is having conversations about potentially filing a similar suit in Arizona. All of the suits seek to halt mail-ballot counting until campaign operatives are granted some type of “meaningful access” to ballot counting locations and are allowed to review all previously opened and counted ballots to verify the tally.

The Georgia suit in particular focuses on Chatham County and looks to separate ballots received after 7:00pm on Election Day from the total, citing an allegation from a ballot counter who claimed to have seen a stack of 53 ballots added for processing, despite being received after the 7:00pm deadline.

The campaign filed a separate suit in Pennsylvania alleging that Democratic Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar violated election law by expanding the window in which voters must provide proper identification.

Campaign manager Bill Stepien said that each suit is aimed at maintaining election “integrity.”

The state Republican parties in Nevada and Pennsylvania filed similar suits late Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, although the Nevada Supreme Court rejected the initial offering from the GOP.

The Trump campaign is reportedly set to announce a lawsuit in Nevada, Fox News reported.

The Trump campaign also filed a recount motion in Wisconsin Wednesday afternoon.

Michigan was called for Biden by the Associated Press and numerous other media outlets on Wednesday afternoon, while the remaining aforementioned states are expected to deliver final results on Thursday and Friday. By the AP’s count, Biden only needs to win one more state to reach 270 electoral college votes.

Both the Trump campaign and the president himself, however, have claimed victory in all of the remaining states despite local officials not having called the races yet.

Biden, meanwhile, said in Wilmington, Delaware, on Wednesday that “it’s clear,” he will have surpassed 270 electoral college votes once the counting stops.

“I’m not here to declare that we have won,” he stated, taking a clear dig at Trump’s Wednesday morning speech at the White House. “I am here to report when the count is finished, we believe we will be the winners.”

“I will work as hard for those who didn’t vote for me as I will for those who did vote for me. Now every vote must be counted,” the former vice president closed. “There will be no blue states and red states when we win. Just the United States of America.”

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