{"id":2643,"date":"2020-12-17T07:40:06","date_gmt":"2020-12-17T07:40:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=140289"},"modified":"2020-12-17T07:40:06","modified_gmt":"2020-12-17T07:40:06","slug":"down-trumps-rabbit-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/17\/down-trumps-rabbit-hole\/","title":{"rendered":"Down Trump\u2019s Rabbit Hole"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Montana\u2019s Attorney General Tim Fox has for years been considered a moderate Republican, but with the announcement that he and Governor-elect Greg Gianforte have joined the lawsuit filed by Texas\u2019 attorney general challenging the election results in four other states, both men have fully gone down Donald Trump\u2019s electoral rabbit hole of lunacy, hypocrisy and incredulity.<\/p>\n

Ken Paxton, the Texas AG who is under FBI investigation<\/a> for bribery and abuse of office, filed a lawsuit<\/a> in the U.S. Supreme Court last week seeking to overturn Trump\u2019s loss in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia and Wisconsin despite the fact that the results have been certified after numerous recounts.<\/p>\n

Simply put, there has been no evidence of widespread election fraud and at least 55 other Trump lawsuits seeking to invalidate the election\u2019s result have been summarily dismissed.<\/p>\n

The Electoral College will voted Dec. 14, to finalize the results in which President-elect Joe Biden beat Trump by 307-232 electoral votes and more than 7 million popular votes.<\/p>\n

Texas\u2019 lawsuit has been widely rebuked by the states in question<\/a> with Pennsylvania\u2019s attorney general characterizing it as having \u201cno basis in law or fact,\u201d and rests on \u201ca surreal alternate reality.\u201d Michigan\u2019s attorney general put it bluntly saying \u201cthe election in Michigan is over. Texas comes as a stranger to this matter and should not be heard here.\u201d Wisconsin\u2019s AG called it an \u201cextraordinary intrusion into Wisconsin\u2019s and the other defendant States\u2019 elections, a task that the Constitution leaves to each State.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s always prudent to \u201cflip the coin\u201d in public policy decisions and look at issues from a different point of view. In this case, Montanans should consider what it would be like to have another state, say California or New York, decide to file suit in the Supreme Court to overturn Montana\u2019s election results because they didn\u2019t like it that Trump won here. It\u2019s well-known that Montanans value their individuality and even the thought that some other state gets to tell us our votes should be overturned would be met with intense opposition.<\/p>\n

Montana\u2019s election officials, like those in other states, take their jobs very seriously, follow the law, check the verification on mail-in and absentee ballots, and report the results accordingly. Likewise, the hundreds of thousands of Montanans who voted last month would be outraged to think some other state\u2019s attorney general has any right whatsoever to interfere in our election \u2014 let alone trying to openly invalidate it.<\/p>\n

Joining Fox, governor-elect Greg Gianforte signed an amicus brief with over a hundred Republican members of Congress to \u201cprevent those states from casting their electoral votes on Monday<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

One must really wonder if Gianforte actually thinks allowing one state \u2014 or members of Congress \u2014 to interfere in the elections of other states is valid? Even Texas\u2019 Republican Senator John Cornyn, formerly a member of Texas\u2019 Supreme Court, rejected the challenge and told reporters<\/a>: \u201cI do not understand the legal theory. I don\u2019t want other states having a chance to change Texas law based on a similar effort. If you can do it for the election, you can do it if somebody wanted to challenge, for example, Texas law on the Second Amendment.\u201d<\/p>\n

It behooves both Fox and Gianforte to consider the \u201cunexpected consequences\u201d of their foolish actions. While Fox is on his way out, Montanans are looking at four years of Gianforte as governor. We, and our beloved state, deserve considerably more prudence than either Fox or Gianforte have shown with this intrusive and doomed effort to overturn a national election at Trump\u2019s behest.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Montana\u2019s Attorney General Tim Fox has for years been considered a moderate Republican, but with the announcement that he and Governor-elect Greg Gianforte have joined the lawsuit filed\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":117,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2643"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/117"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2643"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2644,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2643\/revisions\/2644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}