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Legal expert on Trump's election litigation: Showing evidence is crucial

President Donald Trump and his team are continuing to push litigation in key battleground states that swung from Republican to Democratic as part of President-elect Joe Biden's election win.

News 12 Staff

Nov 8, 2020, 2:13 AM

Updated 1,504 days ago

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President Donald Trump and his team are continuing to push litigation in key battleground states that swung from Republican to Democratic as part of President-elect Joe Biden's election win.
In a statement issued after Biden's victory, Trump said the election is far from over.
Professor John Pavia, who worked with President George W. Bush's legal team on the voter recount in Florida for the presidential election against Al Gore in 2000, says Trump's legal team will question the integrity of the election process in the U.S. to have a standing case.
"You need to show that somehow the process was so systemically defective that it robbed people of a true vote," Pavia says. "The more he can establish that there were systemic defects that didn't protect against fraud or mistakes, the better chance he's going to have of making some kind of case that the whole election and the process violated equal protection or some other constitutional right."
Pavia ordered motions in Florida county courts to start voter recounts when he worked with Bush's legal team in 2000. He explains the differences between the Al Gore/Bush election to this year.
"We are dealing with mail-in and absentee ballots at a level that we've never seen here in the country before. So, the attack and trying to create this evidentiary case that there was some kind of problem is very different," Pavia says.
Trump suggested in a slew of tweets the legitimacy of mail-in ballots and claimed victory in states that had not completed ballot counting.
"President Trump is actually doing disservice to the strategy of his own case and coming out with the statements that he can't support yet," Pavia explains.
So far, Trump's campaign filed lawsuits in Michigan and Pennsylvania, and a recount was ordered in Georgia. They will also ask for a recount in Wisconsin.
"We were talking about one state in 2000. You're talking about five, six states this time around. That's a lot to manage litigation," he explains.
Trump in a statement said his campaign will start prosecuting its case in court on Monday.