President-elect Joe Biden decisively won the 2020 election, and the “frivolous” lawsuits pouring in from the losing side are nothing more than desperate attempts to “overturn” the results, the city of Detroit said in a motion denouncing the Republican Party’s ongoing “assault on the fundamental underpinnings of our democracy.”
“This is one more in a series of ill-conceived cases filed in an attempt to overturn the results of the presidential election,” Detroit and its city clerk Janice Winfrey wrote in a motion on Wednesday. “Like other cases, this complaint relies on hearsay, speculation and unfounded conspiracy theories. And, as in other cases, the plaintiffs here cannot seriously argue that the ‘fraud’ they claim could have possibly influenced the outcome of this election.”
The Motor City brought the fire in 22-page motion, which said that supporters of lame-duck President Donald Trump only decided to contest the election after it became clear that their candidate lost.
“Importantly, plaintiffs did not come forward with their objections while the process was underway,” attorney David Fink wrote in the brief. “Although they are challengers, they did not bring formal challenges. Instead, they waited until the votes were cast, the count was well-underway, and their favored candidate was declared a loser in Michigan by the national news services, before deciding to challenge the process.”
For all of the accusations from poll challengers Cheryl Constantino and Edward McCall Jr., who brought the lawsuit, Detroit said their critics were the ones breaking the law.
“In one instance, challengers exhibited disorderly behavior by chanting ‘Stop the Vote,'” Detroit wrote. “This was inappropriate threatening of workers trying to do their jobs. Such action is specifically prohibited in Michigan election law,” pointing to more than half-century old election code designed to protect poll workers from intimidation.
As they did in Pennsylvania, the Trump supporters asked a judge to block certification of the Michigan results, but the relief requested in the Wolverine State’s lawsuit is even more breathtaking: void the results and start anew, request that Detroit finds more fitting for an authoritarian regime than a constitutional republic.
“Plaintiffs’ requested relief is not only contrary to law it is fundamentally anti-democratic,” their motion states. “To disenfranchise millions of voters based on isolated speculation and debunked conspiracy theories has no place in our democracy.”
The brief by Wayne County, whose seat is Detroit, is similarly scathing.
“Plaintiffs weave a tale of mystery and conspiracy; unnamed individuals participated in nefarious activities to rob the citizens of Detroit of their sacred voting rights,” the county’s lead attorney Janet Anderson-Davis wrote. “Although superficially intriguing, this court should reject that view for the sounder conclusion that election officials and workers appropriately performed their jobs.”
The city and county filed the documents in Michigan’s Third Circuit Court.
Flooding into Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and elsewhere, the cascade of lawsuits by Trump and his loyalists flailing against Biden’s election have routinely lost and has not produced a sliver of evidence of mass-scale voter fraud.
The campaign’s last election lawsuit to land in Michigan was laughed out of court, with the presiding judge scolding Trump’s lawyer “Come on now!” in the face of “inadmissible hearsay within hearsay” offered as evidence. Another in Georgia was booted by a judge who observed there was “no evidence.” A federal judge in Nevada cast aside baseless claims of a voter who was offered a provisional ballot and would not make her claims under oath.
Every credible election observer in the United States and internationally has reached the same conclusion: There was no fraud, and Biden won the race by a convincing margin in a popular vote victory of more than 4 million and five-digit leads in the key battleground states.
Read Detroit’s scathing motion below:
[Image via WDIV4 screengrab]