Lawsuits on lawsuits on lawsuits.
The tables have turned against President Donald Trump and his campaign's many failed legal attempts to toss out legal Detroit votes. The Trump team has filed lawsuits based on claims that Michigan's statewide election was riddled with fraudulent ballots and has attempted to delay Michigan's certification of President-elect Joe Biden's 154,000-vote victory in the battleground state.
A 12-page lawsuit has been filed by the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, along with Black Detroit voters Maureen Taylor, Nicole Hill, and Teasha Jones. Together, the plaintiffs claim Trump's attempts to disenfranchise Black voters who participated in the democratic process during the 2020 presidential election are in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, MLive reports.
“Having unsuccessfully filed numerous unsuccessful lawsuits, defendants have now turned to a new strategy: Pressure state and local officials not to certify election results in key states and then have state legislatures override the will of the voters by installing President Trump’s slate of electors,” the lawsuit reads.
“President Trump and his campaign have repeatedly — and falsely — raised the specter of widespread fraud in Detroit and other cities with large Black populations, including Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Atlanta, in an effort to suggest votes from those cities should not be counted.”
Represented by NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund's legal team, plaintiffs are fighting to block the defendant's continued unlawful intimidation and coercion of Michigan's officials in an attempt to pressure them to throw out legal votes, which violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965 11(b) and could land violators in prison and/or stick them with a $5,000 fine.
More than 30 lawsuits have been filed on behalf of Trump and other Republicans, all of which challenge election results throughout six major swing states. At least 24 of the 36-some lawsuits have either been “denied, dismissed, settled, or withdrawn,” including six waged in Michigan, one of which alleged that Wayne County had denied Republican election challengers access to the ballot certification process, NBC News reports.
Last week, during a totally unhinged press conference in which he not only appeared to begin molting into his true form but claimed Trump's camp found hundreds of thousands of “illegitimate” Michigan ballots in their probe of the state, lawyer Rudy Giuliani blatantly admitted the importance of Wayne County's votes and suggested “if you take out Wayne County” the election results in Michigan would change. Well, yeah.
President Trump has yet to concede the presidency to President-elect Biden and spent the weekend on Twitter leveling unfounded claims that, in states like Michigan, that there were more votes than people (what?) and that many votes were cast by dead people. (Of course, he's likely not referring to the 250,000 dead Americans as a result of his bungled pandemic response, which has directly impacted communities of color.)
In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs directly address the Trump administration's continued war on the Black community in relation to his attempts to nullify Detroit's Black voters.
“Defendants’ tactics repeat the worst abuses in our nation’s history, as Black Americans were denied a voice in American democracy for most of the first two centuries of the Republic,” the lawsuit states.
“No more. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 flatly prohibits Defendants’ efforts to disenfranchise Black people and assault our Republic. This is a moment that many of us hoped never to face,” the plaintiffs said in the lawsuit. “But we are here, and the law is clear. It is time to enforce it.”
This story was originally published by Detroit Metro Times, CityBeat's sister paper
