Nov. 14 (UPI) — Two Pennsylvania judges have tossed half a dozen challenges by the Trump campaign seeking to invalidate thousands of ballots in and around Philadelphia.
The cases are among several President Donald Trump has lost over the past week as he seeks to undermine the elections process in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Michigan, all three of which he lost to President-elect Joe Biden.
The Trump campaign claimed nearly 9,000 Pennsylvania absentee ballots’ outer envelopes improperly lacked names, dates or some combination of the three that voters could have filled out.
Philadelphia County’s Court of Common Pleas Judge James Crumlish ruled in five related cases Friday that 8,329 ballots the Trump campaign alleged were improper should be processed and counted.
In a sixth case, Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas Judge Richard Haaz ruled that 592 mail-in ballots the Trump campaign alleged were improper because addresses on the outside of the envelopes weren’t filled out will be counted.
Haaz said state law did not require the addresses to be filled out and instructions on the ballots did not tell voters they must fill them out.
“Voters should not be disenfranchised by reasonably relying upon voting instructions provided by election officials,” Haaz wrote.
The number of ballots the Trump campaign alleged were improper in the state would not be enough to overcome Biden’s lead in the state, as projections show he currently leads by over 60,000 votes.
Also on Friday, Port Wright Morris & Arthur, the law firm challenging the presidential election results in Pennsylvania on behalf of Trump, withdrew from a federal lawsuit following a similar move by an Arizona law firm representing the Republican Party as it challenged state results, The New York Times reported.
“Cancel Culture has finally reached the courtroom,” Tim Murtaugh, the campaign’s communication director, said in a statement in reaction to the firm’s withdrawal. “Leftist mobs descended upon some of the lawyers representing the president’s campaign and they buckled.”
The withdrawal of Porter Wright left Linda Kerns, solo practitioner in Philadelphia, as the primary attorney now representing the campaign on multiple legal fronts, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
A top lawyer at Jones Day, representing Trump’s campaigns for more than four years, also told colleagues during a video conference call it would not participate in additional election litigation.
Jones Day has been representing the Republican Party in Pennsylvania in litigation about mail-in ballots that arrived up to three days after Election Day but were postmarked by Nov. 3.
The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected a request to overturn an earlier ruling on the three-day grace period, which Trump’s campaign has sought to take to the Supreme Court.
Jones Day spokesman Dave Petrou said that the firm’s litigation is about constitutional questions, and it has not made allegations of voter fraud or contested the election results.
Some Jones Day lawyers do not agree with the firm getting involved.
“I believe the question is whether this firm should lend its prestige and credibility to the project of an administration bent on undermining our democracy and our rule of law,” Parker A. Rider-Longmaid, a Jones Day lawyer in Washington, wrote to colleagues in an email, The New York Times confirmed. “We as lawyers choose our clients and our causes. We choose what we stand for. And this project, I submit, should not be one of those things.”
On Friday, the Trump campaign also dropped its participation in an Arizona lawsuit arguing that poll workers did not notify in-person voters when the electronic ballot tabulation machine detected an “overvote” indicating a voter selected more than the number of candidates allowed in a certain race.
The Trump campaign wrote in a court filing that the judicial ruling was “unnecessary,” after finding tabulation of votes statewide indicated Biden’s lead was insurmountable regardless of the ruling.
The Trump campaign also suffered setback in Michigan Friday when a state judge in Detroit rejected a Republican attempt to halt the certification of the vote in Wayne County pending an audit of the count, saying it would be “unwieldy,” forcing the rest of Michigan to wait.
And on Friday afternoon Kore Langhofer, a lawyer for the Trump campaign, dropped the lawsuit over the so-called “Sharpiegate” question in Arizona, which claimed that some ballots cast for Trump were invalidated after Maricopa County voters used Sharpie pens causing “ink bleeds.”
Langhofer said that there were not enough votes at stake to change the outcome of the race.
Also, on Friday, 16 federal prosecutors assigned to monitor the election said in a letter to Attorney General William Barr there was no evidence of substantial irregularities.
“Whatever happens in the future, who knows, which administration, I guess time will tell,” Trump said during a Rose Garden update on the coronavirus vaccine.
Biden has matched the 306 electoral votes that Trump won four years ago, and has won the popular vote by more than 5 million votes, CNN projections show.
On Thursday, a coalition of government security and election officials working with the Department of Homeland Security said the 2020 general election was “the most secure in American history.”
Trump has put his personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, in charge of his campaign lawsuits challenging the election, along with related public relations, people familiar with the move said Friday.
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