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Further lawsuits come from Trump team, watchdog groups

Major news networks, including the Associated Press, have declared Democratic presidential hopeful Joseph Biden the president elect, which has added more fuel to the fire regarding the ongoing election controversy across the nation.

Fox 4 News (KDFW, Dallas) reported that “The president, who has refused to concede his loss to Biden, has made an aggressive pitch to donors to help finance any court fight.”

Barry Richard, who supported George W. Bush during the 2000 recount in Florida, which eventually made its way to the Supreme Court, told the Associated Press that he felt the legal options open to President Trump were slim.

“Nothing that I’ve seen regarding the election raises a legal issue that could succeed,” said Richard. “There is just is nothing there.”

That has not stopped the president for fighting for what he believes in.

While Fox 4 claims Biden has claimed a total of 290 votes to Trump’s 214, there are pending lawsuits in several states, as well as investigations by the FBI, challenging the legitimacy of these numbers. The lawsuits were not filed exclusively by Trump’s campaign. Most of them have been filed by law firms acting on their own behalf, political watch dog groups, and even groups of private voters who believe their constitutional rights have been slighted in one way or another.

There are lawsuits pending in the majority of states regarding suspected election interference, in states with Democratic strongholds that received private grant funding from a private, non-profit organization called Center for Technology and Civil Life (CTCL). Nearly all of the money donated to the group to fund these grants, came from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan. The donations stem back to the first of September, and again on Oct. 13 when Zuckerberg and Chan announced an additional $100 million to a “safe elections” project run by the non-profit Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL), bringing their total contributions to that project to $350 million since Sept. 1.

On Nov. 9, lockhaven.com’s The Express published a report of a group, the Pennsylvania Voters Alliance and a group of conservative voters, filed a suit to prevent two counties and the city of Philadelphia from using private election grants. The article, dated Nov. 3, states that the group has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to accept the case, maintaining the Constitution requires exclusively publicly funded elections. The Express stated the groups also want the court to decide whether an individual has the right to challenge as a violation of the Election Clause a political subdivision that accepts the private grants.

“A U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel and Middle District Judge Matthew W. Brann,” The Express stated, “refused to issue a temporary injunction to block to the use of the grants finding the plaintiffs ‘did not have standing.'” Brann was nominated to the Middle District bench in 2012, by President Barack Obama.

In Michigan, just one day after the Trump campaign filed a suit in the Michigan Court of Claims requesting stop to voting and counting process, because Republicans were denied “meaningful access” to poll challengers. Judge Cynthia Stephens, a Gov. Gretchen Whitmer appointee, dismissed the case, saying Michigan’s ballots had mostly been counted, adding there is no legal basis to grant the requests. Five days after Stephens issued her opinion, Fox2detroit reported that across the entire state of Michigan, at least 100,000 ballots were yet to be counted as of noon, according to Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, against whom the lawsuit was filed. Many were in Democratic cities including Detroit, Grand Rapids, Flint, and Kalamazoo.

Contradicting Stephens’ claim that there was no legal basis to grant the requests, video clips continue to surface on social media showing election officials denying access to authorized GOP poll watchers, the Federalist reported on Nov. 5.

Aric Nesbitt, a Michigan state senator, posted a video on Twitter Wednesday afternoon of election workers at the convention center in Detroit, where absentee ballots are being counted, the Federalist stated. The video shows workers cheering every time an official election observer with the Michigan GOP is ejected from the counting room. Apparently this has been happening frequently, in violation of state law. Democratic observers, says Nesbitt, now outnumber Republicans observers at the convention center 3 to 1.

Phil Kline, former Kansas attorney general and now an attorney for the nonprofit Amistad Project, which filed a lawsuit on Nov. 2 alleging that tens of thousands of ballots in Detroit have been illegally filled out by election officials and Democratic election observers.

“We have confirmed evidence that Democratic election officials have violated state law,” he told The Federalist, “and have opened the door for fraud involving tens of thousands of ballots.”

An analysis by the Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society found that since Sept. 1, 2020, the CTCL has made at least $63.7 million in grants to election commissions in 18 counties and two cities for what the CTCL calls the coronavirus “safe elections” project.

However, more than 99.5 percent of this funding — $63.4 million — went to election commissions in 17 counties and two cities won by Hillary Clinton in 2016. More than $13.9 million went to election commissions in areas Hillary Clinton won with more than 80 percent of the vote. Ten million dollars went to the city of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, in which Clinton won with 84 percent of the vote, $3.5 million went to Wayne County, Michigan, where Clinton won with 96 percent of the vote, and $467,000 went to the election commission in the city of Flint, which Clinton won with 84 percent of the vote. Less than one half of one percent of the funding — a mere $289,000 — went to a county Donald Trump won in 2016, Hays County, Texas, which the president barely won by a margin of 50.4 percent to 49.6 percent.

Flint received $475,625 and Lansing received $440,000 from the CTCL, which the Associated Press says received most of the grant money through a donation by Zuckerberg and Chan.

The Election Integrity Fund, which is also a non-profit organization based in Chicago, claims in its lawsuit against Michigan, that the use of the grants is a violation of federal and state law.

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