Tony Evers
Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers (D) minced few words in a legal brief to his state’s highest court denouncing lame-duck President Donald Trump for his “shocking and outrageous assault on our democracy.”
“President Trump’s Petition seeks nothing less than to overturn the will of nearly 3.3 million Wisconsin voters,” the governor’s attorney Jeffrey Mandell wrote in a 58-page legal brief, which called his campaign’s election-overturning efforts “wrong as a matter of law, incorrect as a matter of fact, and mistaken as a matter of procedure.”
“Indeed, he has sought relief in the wrong court and has refused to follow the proper steps under the statute that he himself acknowledges governs the appeal of recounts,” the filing went on. “And by focusing on alleged technical violations in only two counties, he has made plain that his intent is not to fairly determine who Wisconsinites voted for to lead our country. He is simply trying to seize Wisconsin’s electoral votes, even though he lost the statewide election.”
Quoting the Trump-appointed Third Circuit judge who handed Rudy Giuliani his second defeat, the brief notes: “Voters, not lawyers, choose the President. Ballots, not briefs, decide elections.”
Evers noted that the recount requested and funded by the Trump campaign did not change that outcome.
“Indeed, President Trump’s deficit increased through the recount,” the governor’s lawyers added. “President Trump alleges no miscounting or other error that would call into question the intent of Wisconsin’s voters. Instead, he seeks to win in court what he lost in the election.”
Attorneys for the Democratic National Committee and soon-to-be Commander-in-Chief Joe Biden’s presidential electors called out the Trump campaign’s strategy of seeking to disenfranchise Wisconsin’s most diverse areas.
“That requested ‘relief’ is an affront to the voters of Dane and Milwaukee Counties—not coincidentally, the counties with the most urban residents and voters of color, who voted overwhelmingly for the Biden-Harris ticket,” their attorney Charles G. Curtis, Jr., from Perkins Coie, wrote in his opposition papers, denouncing Trump’s intent for such a “blatantly discriminatory result.”
In a separate brief, those two counties told the Supreme Court of Wisconsin that Trump had run roughshod over “basic norms regarding our elections and the orderly transition of power to the winning candidate.”
The appendix of the governor’s legal brief shows a copy of the election certification declaring the winner to be Biden.
Read Governor Evers’ legal brief below:
(Screengrab via PBS)
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