Federal judge rejects final Trump suit seeking to overturn Georgia electoral results News
© WikiMedia (Phil Roeder)
Federal judge rejects final Trump suit seeking to overturn Georgia electoral results

A federal judge denied US President Donald Trump’s latest campaign lawsuit in Georgia on Tuesday, removing one of the final options left to Trump for challenging his loss in the 2020 presidential election before Congress counts the Electoral College votes on January 6.

Judge Mark Cohen in Atlanta denied the Trump campaign’s motion for preliminary injunction seeking to de-certify the Georgia election results, which sought to have either the Georgia state legislature or Congress select presidential electors for the state. Governor Brian Kemp and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger served as defendants.

This denial is in alignment with more than 60 court cases that the Trump campaign has lost since November, all seeking to challenge President-elect Joe Biden’s widely-recognized win in the Electoral College. Lawyers for the Trump campaign chiefly argued that there had been illegal underaged, unregistered, and deceased individuals voting in Georgia and that the final vote tallies had therefore been illegally inflated.

Among other claims, the Trump campaign asserted that there had been improper handling and issuance of absentee ballots, that unverified signatures had been accepted on absentee ballots, and that there had been misconduct at voting centers that could have allowed the vote tally to be impermissibly altered. Similar claims have been made in prior suits filed in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all of which have been found to be largely baseless by judges in those states.

This court loss means that the Trump campaign has few legal options before Congress officially counts the Electoral College votes in session on January 6, which is a largely ceremonial confirmation of the Electoral College’s vote in December and the general election in November. Biden is expected to be the winner of the January 6 counting and is likewise expected to be sworn in as president on January 21.