This week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is a Republican, announced a lawsuit in which he was challenging the election results in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia, all of which, he alleged, unconstitutionally expanded mail-in voting ahead of Election Day. A full 17 Republican state Attorney Generals from across the United States have joined the Texas lawsuit in support of Paxton’s position, and President Donald Trump’s own team has done the same. Essentially, the lawsuit seeks the invalidation of the documented will of the people in four states where Joe Biden clearly won. On Twitter, Jeb Bush — a former Republican governor of Florida — insisted that there’s “no legal theory” behind the Texas case.
Bush was responding to comments from Texas Senator John Cornyn (R), who also questioned the foundation for the lawsuit, which Paxton filed with the U.S. Supreme Court because of that court’s exclusive jurisdiction over court fights between states. Bush commented as follows:
This is crazy. it will be killed on arrival. Why are smart people advancing this notion? Let it go. The election is over. https://t.co/ocvaAYnata
— Jeb Bush (@JebBush) December 11, 2020
‘thank you Senator Cornyn. there is no legal theory and the conservative majority Supreme Court will reject it out of hand.’
thank you Senator Cornyn. there is no legal theory and the conservative majority Supreme Court will reject it out of hand. https://t.co/3UTDsrlWyC
— Jeb Bush (@JebBush) December 10, 2020
Originally, as reported by CNN’s Manu Raju on Twitter, Cornyn commented as follows:
‘It’s very unusual because when a state sues a state, the Supreme Court of the United States has original jurisdiction, so you don’t have to go through the ordinary procedure. I read just the summary of it, and I frankly struggle to understand the legal theory of it. Number one, why would a state, even such a great state as Texas, have a say so on how other states administer their elections? We have a diffused and dispersed system and even though we might not like it, they may think it’s unfair, those are decided at the state and local level and not at the national level. So it’s an interesting theory, but I’m not convinced.’
Texas’s other U.S. Senator, Republican Ted Cruz, has taken the opposite approach. President Donald Trump has asked Cruz, who is a lawyer, to argue the case before the U.S. Supreme Court if the court agrees to hear the proceedings, and Cruz has agreed to do so, according to a spokesperson.
Donald Trump is openly trying to overturn American democracy, and most of the elected officials who backed his candidacy fall into two camps: those supporting him and those to afraid to speak up for democracy
— Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) December 10, 2020
Trump has vocally supported the Texas effort. On Twitter this Thursday, he insisted that the Supreme Court “has a chance to save our Country from the greatest Election abuse in the history of the United States,” but there’s no particular indication that the court is going to go along with his scheme. In that same Twitter post, Trump claimed that “78% of the people feel (know!) the Election was RIGGED,” which doesn’t appear to be correct. A recent survey found that 78 percent of respondents who believed that the election “wasn’t free and fair” thought “that mail-in voting led to widespread voter fraud.” Respondents who believed that the election wasn’t “free and fair” included 70 percent of Republicans, not people in general.
The Supreme Court has a chance to save our Country from the greatest Election abuse in the history of the United States. 78% of the people feel (know!) the Election was RIGGED.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 10, 2020
Featured Image via Gage Skidmore on Wikimedia Commons, available under a Creative Commons License. Check out Twitter’s response to Bush below:
