Trump’s “big lie” that the 2020 presidential election was rigged for Joe Biden could cost him. Wisconsin’s Milwaukee County has asked a federal court to compel Trump and his team to cover $65,000 in legal fees for the county connected to court fights that the ex-president launched over the presidential election outcome. Biden won Wisconsin by a slim margin, and the state was one of the top targets for these judicial battles. At one point, Trump’s team even asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene and invalidate the entire presidential election outcome in Wisconsin. The court, which has three of Trump’s own appointees, refused.
As summarized by Bloomberg, Milwaukee County argued in its new filing that Trump “never had a valid reason to sue to toss out Wisconsin’s 3.3 million votes, a long-shot effort that would have paved the way for the state’s GOP-dominated legislature to appoint a slate of electors more favorable to Trump.” Trump and his allies pushed the idea of completely invalidating state-level presidential election outcomes elsewhere as well, including through an additional U.S. Supreme Court filing led by Texas state Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican.
As Milwaukee County put it, discussing Trump’s effort to completely set aside the Wisconsin election outcome:
‘Trump never offered any legal or factual basis for his breathtaking request, and none exists. The relief he sought was entirely baseless and amply justifies the imposition of sanctions.’
None of the many election-related lawsuits from Trump and his allies ever got anywhere meaningful, as no court anywhere in the country ever even partially accepted the idea that the election had been rigged for Biden. Tellingly, Trump and his allies failed to even meaningfully map out how the alleged rigging took place. If a nationwide election-rigging scheme unfolded, then one might expect that those who claimed to have discovered it could tell observers who was in charge. Trump and his supporters could never do any such thing.
Although the lie that the election was rigged for Biden was used as a pretext by the Capitol rioters in January, Trump has held fast to his fanciful idea that he was the rightful winner of the election. In the immediate aftermath of the rioting, Trump publicly justified what took place, writing on Twitter in reference to the violence that “these are the things and events that happen” when an election victory is stolen, which obviously didn’t actually take place.
