Tennessee is joining the ongoing battle over the presidential election results. The state’s attorney general filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court on Wednesday stating Tennessee’s support of Texas’ lawsuit that challenges results in four states.
Seventeen states are now teaming up with Texas in an effort to throw out results from Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, all of which flipped Democrat as absentee ballots were counted after Election Day.
The brief criticizes the process of counting absentee votes and repeats the claim that they are “invalid” and corrupted the process. That’s although some states on the brief that went for Trump, like Kansas and Mississippi, also count mail-in ballots after Election Day.
The argument made in the initial suit from Texas is that non-elected officials amended their states’ election laws. In a statement, Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery says he has always maintained the belief that “only a state’s legislature has the authority to make and change election laws.” He points to Tennessee’s fight over the expansion of mail-in voting due to the pandemic which was ultimately scaled back in the courts before November.
We will be INTERVENING in the Texas (plus many other states) case. This is the big one. Our Country needs a victory!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2020
Trump, who has lost the vast majority of his personal legal battles over the results, is asking to join the widely scorned Texas suit, NPR reports. The president’s brief was not signed by acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall or any other Justice Department official, but was instead filed by a conservative law professor at Chapman University, John Eastman. Trump’s campaign says in a statement that he is intervening “in his personal capacity as candidate for re-election.”
State electors are meeting Monday to cast their ballots and make president-elect Joe Biden’s victory official.
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