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Trump appeals against Pennsylvania ruling as he fights to hold the White House

UNITED STATES President Donald Trump has filed an appeal against a weekend ruling that dismissed his team’s complaints about election results in Pennsylvania.

And his lawyers also formally requested a recount of the vote in Georgia, where president-elect Joe Biden’s lead of 12,670 votes — 0.25 per cent of the total — is below the 0.5 per cent that allows defeated candidates to demand recounts. 

The legal manoeuvres show that the Republican has not given up hope of overturning the result, and combine with efforts by the White House to put political pressure on state legislatures to interfere with the selection of the electoral-college delegates due to formally confirm the next president on December 14.

Georgia’s 16 electoral-college votes and Pennsylvania’s 20 helped “flip” the election for Mr Biden when Mr Trump’s early leads in both states disappeared as the count went on, prompting the incumbent to repeatedly demand an end to counting ballots.

But his bid to overturn the Pennsylvania result was savaged by US District Court Judge Matthew Brann on Saturday in an order dismissing the case made in court by Mr Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

Mr Brann said the suit asked the court to disenfranchise “almost seven million voters.

“One might expect that when seeking such a startling outcome, a plaintiff would come formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption,” the judge wrote. “That has not happened.”

Claims from Mr Trump’s team that the election was rigged with assistance from foreign countries, notably Venezuela and Cuba, have been widely mocked. On Friday it announced that Sidney Powell, who had claimed evidence of “massive influence of communist money through Venezuela, Cuba and likely China” to secure Mr Biden’s win in a press conference with Mr Giuliani just a day earlier, was no longer associated with the president.

Mr Trump invited Michigan legislators to the Oval Office on Friday, reportedly to ask them to set aside the popular vote and authorise Republican rather than Democrat delegates to the electoral college, although following the meeting they denied he had done so and said they would follow normal procedures. The president is said to be considering a similar emergency meeting with Pennsylvania legislators.

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