(CNN)A federal appeals court denied the Trump campaign’s effort to revive a federal lawsuit challenging the election results in Pennsylvania, ruling “the claims have no merit.”
A panel of three judges for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals denied the request by the Trump campaign, led by Rudy Giuliani, to amend its lawsuit, which had been previously rejected.
“The Campaign never alleges that any ballot was fraudulent or cast by an illegal voter,” the judges wrote. “It never alleges that any defendant treated the Trump campaign or its votes worse than it treated the Biden campaign or its votes. Calling something discrimination does not make it so. The Second Amended Complaint still suffers from these core defects, so granting leave to amend would have been futile.”
The President and some of his allies have been questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 election, saying without evidence that it was fraudulent and seeking to use legal battles to overturn results in key states.
The judges also rejected the President’s motion to undo Pennsylvania’s certification of votes.
“The Campaign’s claims have no merit. The number of ballots it specifically challenges is far smaller than the roughly 81,000-vote margin of victory. And it never claims fraud or that any votes were cast by illegal voters. Plus, tossing out millions of mail-in ballots would be drastic and unprecedented, disenfranchising a huge swath of the electorate and upsetting all down-ballot races too. That remedy would be grossly disproportionate to the procedural challenges raised,” the judges wrote.
The President’s campaign appealed a scathing ruling last weekend when Judge Matthew Brann threw out the lawsuit ruling it could not be amended and refiled.
Brann compared it to “Frankenstein’s monster … haphazardly stitched together,” and slammed the request to disenfranchise nearly seven million voters in a complaint littered with “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations.”
The appeals court referenced the Trump campaign’s multiple attempts to alter its lawsuit and praised Brann’s handling of the matter.
“We commend the District Court for its fast, fair, patient handling of this demanding litigation,” the panel wrote.
This story is breaking and will be updated.
