With the Electoral College hours away from certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, one of the president’s top advisers blamed — of all things — corporate news entities for the astounding string of legal losses suffered by the Trump campaign and its allies. Appearing on Fox & Friends Monday morning, Senior Advisor to the President Stephen Miller said the judiciary was ruling against Trump’s interests because it had been forced to “cave” by media pressure, not the dearth of evidence to support claims of fraud.
During the appearance, Miller echoed several debunked and erroneous conspiracy theories that the president and his supporters have promulgated in an attempt to assert that the 2020 election was marred by “massive fraud.”
Host Brian Kilmeade prompted Miller to provide an explanation as to why judges—including several appointed by President Donald Trump himself—continued to reject the campaign’s attempts to overturn the election.
“If there were underage people voting, if there were criminals voting, if there was illegal ballots cast—your legal team, in almost every state, 50 times, lost. Some with Trump judges,” Kilmeade said, before asking, “So do you have the worst legal team, who just don’t seem to be presenting a good case, or are you just too late and this case should have been brought before the election?”
Miller responded by faulting corporate media outlets, claiming they somehow strong-armed federal judges into ignoring the president’s lackluster allegations.
“What you have to appreciate and realize is that the pressure from the corrupt corporate media to make everybody cave and bend is overwhelming,” Miller said. “And so, yes—judges are caving, politicians are caving—we need heroes to step up and do the right thing.”
The famously anti-immigrant Miller then stated that Democrats were “opposing an audit of the vote,” which is false, and asserted that officials should match mail-in ballots and envelopes back to specific voters—which is generally impossible by design. For example, in Georgia, a ballot’s signature is matched to the voter’s signature on file. Once verified, the envelope is separated from the ballot to ensure the voter’s privacy. Though both are retained for two years, they cannot be re-matched.
Miller also said that some states where Trump lost the popular vote were nonetheless planning on having an “alternate” group of electors vote on Monday.
“The only date in the Constitution is January 20, so we have more than enough time to right the wrong of this fraudulent election result and certify Donald Trump as the winner of the election,” Miller said. “As we speak, today, an alternate slate of electors in the contested states is going to vote and we’re going to send those results to Congress. This will ensure that all of our legal remedies remain open. That means that if we win these cases in the courts that we can direct that the alternate slate of electors be certified.”
https://twitter.com/travisakers/status/1338484357389017090?s=20
Attorney Ross Garber, an election law expert, called the “alternate electors” plan “appallingly undemocratic,” though Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig pointed out that previous precedent demands the Trump campaign do this if they actually hope to overturn the election results.
Biden defeated Trump in the electoral college 306-232, according to the results certified in all 50 states. And despite continued protestations from the current administration, the Trump campaign has not produced any credible evidence of widespread voter fraud. In fact, campaign attorneys have repeatedly conceded that they were not alleging voter fraud in their plethora of lawsuits challenging the election results. One court which took up Trump’s case on the merits decided that Trump lost.
Additionally, as U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr recently reiterated, there has been no evidence of widespread fraud taking place in any state. The former head of the U.S. Department of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure also stated that the 2020 election was the “most secure in American history.”
[image via MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images]
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