Monday on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) offered to present oral arguments to the U.S. Supreme Court should it take up a vote-by-mail election lawsuit involving Pennsylvania’s handling of the 2020 election.
Cruz, a former solicitor general for the state of Texas, told host Sean Hannity that he saw the case as a presenting question needing resolution from the high court.
“You know, we’re seeing across the country lawsuits that that are challenging voter fraud, that are challenging irregularities in the election,” he said. “And in Pennsylvania, this appeal to the Supreme Court raises very serious issues. It raises pure issues of law. And I believe the Supreme Court should choose to take the case. I think they should hear the appeal, and as you noted, the legal team reached out and asked if I would be willing to present the oral argument if the court took the case, and I told them I’d be happy to because particularly at a time when this country is so divided when people are so angry, I think we need a sense of resolution, and we need the Supreme Court to step in and ensure that we’re following the Constitution and following the law. Right now, it’s not healthy for our democracy what we’re seeing, and in Pennsylvania, the problem was made worse because the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is a partisan Democratic court that has issued multiple decisions that that were just on their face contrary to law. And that’s not how elections are supposed to work.”
The Texas Republican lawmaker acknowledged the difficulties in getting the Supreme Court to hear a case but urged the court to hear it.
“If an individual state did sue another state before the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction over that,” Cruz continued. “That’s a matter that they could consider. The challenge right now is the timing, is that we’re getting awfully close. Tomorrow is what’s called the safe-harbor deadline for the presidential electors, the electors will cast their ballots on December 14, and then obviously, we’ve got the presidential inauguration coming up on January 20. So, the time is running out of the hourglass. I think the Supreme Court feels the urgency of that that’s the reason why Justice Alito set the deadline for Pennsylvania’s response to this lawsuit to be tomorrow, so that — so that we’ll have a response, we could have a decision as early as tomorrow from the Supreme Court whether or not they’ll take the case. Now, getting the Supreme Court to take a case is not easy. Typically, you get about 8,000 appeals to the Supreme Court in a given year. They take about 80 of them. They take about 1%.”
“I think the court should consider it,” he added. “I have called on the court to do it. I think it’s the right thing to do. There will be justices who would prefer to stay out of this, who would prefer to protect their own — their own credibility, essentially to protect their backsides. I think that’s the wrong thing to do here. I think when you look at a country where 39% of Americans right now believe this last election was rigged, that’s a real problem for confidence in the integrity of our electoral system. And so, I’m hopeful the Supreme Court will step forward to its responsibility and resolve this case, and resolve other cases as needed, according to law and according to the Constitution, to say this is a country where we respect the rule of law, where we follow the Constitution not the momentary partisan swells of interest or passion you may see on either side.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor