By Aaron Miller-
A prominent law firm withdrew overnight from a Trump legal suit in Pennsylvania seeking to have mail-in ballots thrown out.
The withdrawal in the latest blow to the president’s efforts to challenge the 2020 election result in court. As news of a growing pandemic in the U.S continues to rage, over 130 Secret Service agents have reportedly contracted coronavirus or have been asked to quarantine after Donald Trump’s extensive campaign travel in the final weeks before the presidential election.
The Ohio-based Porter Wright Morris & Arthur firm, which brought a suit on Monday alleging that the use of mail-in ballots had created “an illegal two-tiered voting system” in the state, suddenly withdrew from that case in a memo to the court.
“Plaintiffs and Porter Wright have reached a mutual agreement that plaintiffs will be best served if Porter Wright withdraws,” the memo said. The lead lawyer in the case, the Pittsburgh-based Ronald L Hicks Jr, did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The news was first reported by the New York Times will come s a relief to the Biden team who have all along expressed confidence that his election victory will ultimately stand.
Trump’s team alleged voter’s fraud ahead of the election, and said representative observers had been denied access to the counting process. They also alleged that the names of deceased people were passed as live voters.
The Porter Wright suit had challenged nearly 2.65m votes that were cast by mail, the majority by Democrats. It accused the secretary of the commonwealth, Kathy Boockvar, of “arbitrary and illegal actions” and sought an emergency order prohibiting the certification of the Pennsylvania election result.
Other U.S federal and state officials have said they had no evidence that votes were compromised or altered in last week’s presidential election, rejecting unsupported claims of widespread fraud advanced by Trump and many of his supporters.
The statement from cybersecurity experts said the 3 November election as the most secure in American history.
The Trump campaign has been accused of using lawsuits trying to prevent or delay states in which Trump lost from certifying their election results. They have also been accused of frustrating the process of smooth transition, and denying the Biden team of daily intelligence briefings. Biden has opened up a lead of 5.3m popular votes and counting, and he is on track to win the electoral college 306-232.
Dozens of lawsuits brought by the Trump campaign in six states to challenge the election result have failed to yield any favourable outcomes for the president so far
Ballots targeted by Trump lawsuits are also reported to be not large enough to overtake Biden’s lead in Pennsylvania, where he is up almost 60,000 votes and counting, and in other states.
Porter Wright is representing the Trump campaign and the Republican party in other Pennsylvania lawsuits, including one seeking to throw out mail-in ballots for which missing voter identification information was not provided by 9 November
Legal news site law.com described it a “public relations nightmare” for the firms. At least one lawyer at Porter Wright is said to have resigned over the firm’s decision to carry Trump’s lawsuits forward.