SC AG Wilson joins Texas in bid in US Supreme Court to overthrow Biden election

Republican S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson has joined with Texas in an unprecedented effort by 16 other attorneys general to try to help Texas in its bid to overturn the results of President-elect Joe Biden’s decisive Nov. 3 popular election.

“Regardless of your ideological beliefs, we must all agree that free and fair elections are the keystone of democracy,” said Wilson, the state’s top lawyer, in a press release.

“Our Constitution’s election clauses must be followed, and the Constitution must be a guiding light for fair elections to continue to take place. Our values and the rule of law are worth defending.”

It was unclear what Wilson was referring to when he mentioned “fair elections” in his press release.

Meanwhile, Wilson and other Republican state attorneys general are scheduled to have lunch today with President Trump at the White House, Forbes Magazine reported. Like Wilson, the attorneys general dining with the president are those who signed on to the Texas bid to overturn Biden’s popular vote victories in four battleground states

Despite numerous claims, all of them so far baseless, that cheating gave Biden his victory, no one has proven any massive voting fraud in any state in the Nov. 3 election. Overall, Biden beat Trump by some 7 million votes — one of the largest margins of any presidential candidate ever.

Trump claims he has won, refuses to concede defeat, and his supporters are waging what experts have described as a massive public relations misinformation campaign pushing the baseless claims of fraud on social media, the scale of which has rarely, if ever, been seen in America.

State Sen. Dick Harpootlian, D-Richland, a former S.C. Democratic Party chairman and Biden supporter, said, “I’m disappointed with our attorney general. With the limited resources of his office, he has chosen to get involved in what is clearly not a South Carolina issue. Obviously this is prompted by naked partisan politics rather than a quest for justice. And it is obviously a fruitless effort.”

Other states recognize Biden’s win

Despite efforts by Trump allies, Biden’s popular vote victory has been repeatedly recognized as legitimate by numerous state and federal courts, as well as dozens of election officials, in various battleground states, including Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Moreover, various states have held recounts — Georgia, for example, had three recounts — and in various states voting practices have been scrutinized but no evidence of massive election fraud or irregularities has been found. Biden won Georgia and its 16 electoral votes by some 12,000 votes.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court turned down without explanation a motion by Pennsylvania allies to overturn Biden’s election. When the Supreme Court turns down a case without explanation, it basically means that there was no issue for the high court to resolve. The Pennsylvania request was an an appeal from a lower court that had, in effect, upheld Biden’s victory. Biden won Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes by more than 80,000 votes.

During his four years, Trump had nominated and had placed on the U.S. Supreme Court three of its current nine justices, including two this year. But as Tuesday’s Supreme Court denial showed, none of Trump’s three justices or any of their colleagues have shown any sign of getting involved in reversing his loss.

Already, state and federal judges in a half-dozen battleground states have thrown out some 50 lawsuits that alleged voter fraud in various battleground states that Biden won by decisive margins. All of the lawsuits alleging fraud were deemed without merit — either on the law, or the facts, or both, according to numerous news media accounts.

What does Texas lawsuit claim?

In the amicus, or friend of the court, brief that Wilson signed on to, the attorneys general are joining with Texas to ask the Supreme Court to hear a legal complaint by Texas in which it questions Biden’s victories in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Texas must get permission from the Supreme Court to have its case heard.

Courts in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia have already dismissed as unproven numerous lawsuits alleging fraud.

The Texas legal action before the high court does not allege fraud, but it raises questions about voting by mail in those four states and whether those states’ Legislatures were denied their constitutional role in overseeing voting by mail.

In each of those states, the Texas motion alleges, “protections that responsible actors had recommended for decades to guard against fraud and abuse in voting by mail” had been removed.

If Trump’s allies could win a court victory that would cause the subtraction from Biden’s current total of 306 electoral votes, the electoral votes of Wisconsin (10 electoral votes), Michigan (16), Pennsylvania (20) and Georgia (16), that would mean Biden would have only 244 electoral votes and hand the election to Trump.

Trump would then get Biden’s 64 votes from those four states and wind up with a total of 294 electoral votes. A candidate needs at least 270 to win.

Late Wednesday, Trump himself moved to intervene in the Texas action before the Supreme Court. Trump’s motion does not allege specific examples of fraud and claims that “It is not necessary for the Plaintiff (Trump) in Intervention to prove that fraud occurred.”

But, Trump’s lawsuit asserts, a mathematical analysis of vote totals in the battleground states shows that Trump should have won those states and “a large percentage of the American people know that something is deeply amiss.”

The Texas lawsuit and the Trump move to intervene are being countered by a group of former Republican elected officials and lawyers who warn that if the Supreme Court intervenes, this kind of legal struggle will wind up in the Supreme Court and ”recur over and over again around the country with each presidential (election),” the Republicans’ brief says.

A presidential election dispute is not “a controversy between two or more states” but under the Constitution, each state has the sole authority to settle election disputes, and that has been done in these states, the Republicans’ brief says.

Republicans on this brief include former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, former Senator John Danforth of Missouri, and former Senator and Governor Lowell Weicker of Connecticut.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is a Republican and longtime Trump ally.

Wilson has often used his office to join with other conservative attorneys general in their legal fights for hot button political issues such as abortion, immigration or gun rights. But Wilson’s alignment with conservatives in a bid to overthrow a national presidential election represents an entry into a new sphere of activity for him.

Wednesday evening, U.S Rep. Joe Cunningham, D-Charleston, had this reaction to the Texas bid to undermine the Biden victory.

“President Trump’s refusal to accept the legitimate results of the 2020 election is disturbingly autocratic and will go down as one of the darkest and most shameful moments in our nation’s history,” Cunningham said.

“Let me be clear. Donald Trump lost the election. Any elected official who suggests otherwise is living in a fantasy, or perhaps more accurately, deliberately trying to mislead people and corrupt our democracy. It is dangerous and it is un-American.”

This legal controversy is being covered by the authorative U.S. Supreme Court internet news site Scotusblog.

This story was originally published December 9, 2020 at 6:33 PM with the headline "SC AG Wilson joins Texas in bid in US Supreme Court to overthrow Biden election."