Judge Defies Trump & Rules To Certify Election Results

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Wayne Circuit Court Chief Judge Timothy Kenny — a state judge in Michigan — has rejected a request from Michigan Republicans to block the official certification of election results in Wayne County, which includes Detroit, which leans heavily Democratic. A part of the original lawsuit included the submission of a slew of affidavits from people who claimed to have witnessed fraudulent or potentially fraudulent activity firsthand. Kenny tore into these affidavits, describing the suit’s interpretation of events during ballot-counting as simply “not credible.”

In one example, a Michigan man named Daniel Gustafson filled out an affidavit alleging that he saw the delivery of “large quantities of ballots” in containers that “did not have lids, were not sealed, or did not have marking indicating their source of origin,” as Judge Kenny’s ruling summarizes. The judge characterized Gustafson’s affidavit as “yet another example of generalized speculation” that was untethered from basic realities at hand. In this instance, the judge explained, there’s no apparent Michigan statute demanding that ballots are only transported in boxes with lids or exterior identifying markings. GOP claims are conspiratorial nonsense.

In the case of another one of the affidavits alleging misconduct, Judge Kenny made the following tart observation, discussing Biden’s local vote totals:

‘It is not surprising that many of the votes being observed by Mr. Sitto were votes cast for Mr. Biden in light of the fact that former Vice President Biden received approximately 220,000 more votes than President Trump.’

Judge Kenny said that affiants presented to the court as part of the lawsuit hadn’t even attended a pre-Election Day walk-through of the Detroit ballot-counting center in question. (Affiants are the individuals who filled out the affidavits.) As Kenny noted, “if Plaintiffs’ election challenger affiants had attended the October 29, 2020 walk-through of the TCF Center ballot counting location, questions and concerns could have been answered in advance of Election Day.” However, “regrettably, they did not attend” the walk-through session, the judge says, characterizing the individuals responsible for the affidavits as lacking a “full understanding of the TCF absent ballot tabulation process.”

Despite their ignorance, the plaintiffs ascribed “sinister, fraudulent motivations” to local authorities, but the plaintiffs’ “interpretation of events is incorrect and not credible,” Judge Kenny adds.

These plaintiffs and the individuals behind the affidavits are far from the only people who have ascribed “sinister” motivations to local election officials around the country. President Donald Trump himself has alleged that the election was “rigged,” and he has claimed that local officials worked to include enough fraudulent or otherwise invalid Biden votes in the process to keep Trump from winning.

Top Trump ally Rudy Giuliani has claimed that an “order” could have come from the top for local Democratic officials to fabricate Biden votes and suppress Trump. There is no evidence for these bombastic claims, and claims need evidence — egotistical hunches based in ignorance do not outweigh tangible evidence in court cases.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) recently ascribed some of the Trump campaign’s legal actions to racism. Cities that have been top rhetorical targets for Trump and his allies include Detroit and Philadelphia — both of which have substantial Black populations. Nessel said that a “narrative” running through Trump’s lawsuits is that “Black people are corrupt, Black people are incompetent and Black people can’t be trusted.”