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VOA \u2014 WASHINGTON – Federal judge Stephanos Bibas pulled no punches when he issued a scathing opinion last Saturday rejecting the Trump campaign\u2019s latest attempt to overturn the outcome of the November 3 presidential election.<\/p>\nVOA \u2014 WASHINGTON – Federal judge Stephanos Bibas pulled no punches when he issued a scathing opinion last Saturday rejecting the Trump campaign\u2019s latest attempt to overturn the outcome of the November 3 presidential election.<\/p>\n
\u201cCharges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so,\u201d Bibas wrote in a 21-page ruling<\/a> dismissing a lawsuit that sought to stop the certification of Pennsylvania’s voting results. \u201cCharges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n This was among the latest repudiations of President Donald Trump\u2019s unsubstantiated claim that the election he lost to former Vice President Joe Biden was rigged and that millions of votes were illegally cast or discounted. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n In the month since the election, Trump and his allies have filed more than three dozen lawsuits, mostly in state courts, with judges ruling against them in all but one minor case. \u00a0<\/p>\n But Bibas, 51, is not just another judge on another court. He is a Trump appointee on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, with jurisdiction over Pennsylvania and two other states. A former member of the conservative Federalist Society, Bibas was appointed in 2017, one of 53 appellate judges the president has put on the federal bench since he took office, more than any other president since Jimmy Carter. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Bibas is not the only Republican-appointed federal judge to dismiss Trump\u2019s claims of rampant voting fraud and tabulation irregularities. Steven Grimberg of the Northern District of Georgia\u00a0and several other Republican-appointed judges, have ruled against the president. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Judicial independence<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n To skeptics who view judges as little more than politicians in robes prone to issuing politically motivated opinions, the notion that a Trump-appointed judge would weigh against the president\u2019s interests may be hard to fathom. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n But that is a misconception, said Joseph R. Grodin, a former associate justice of the California Supreme Court. Despite the country\u2019s deep political and ideological divisions, \u201cjudicial independence is alive and well,\u201d he said in an interview with VOA. \u00a0<\/p>\n Grodin said most judges simply follow the law and decide cases on their merits, so it was no surprise that Bibas found the evidence-free Trump lawsuit without merit. \u00a0<\/p>\n Jonathan Turley, a conservative law professor at George Washington University, noted that federal judges are given life tenures designed to protect them from political influence. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe federal courts have worked precisely as designed in the last four years, but particularly in the last four weeks,\u201d he said. \u201cFederal judges, including Trump appointees, have consistently ruled against the president\u2019s challenges to the election. They have stated that the president has not submitted sufficient evidence to justify the type of sweeping relief that he has requested.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n Republican-appointed judges did not always side with the Democrats on important election issues throughout the 2020 campaign cycle, particularly regarding mail-in voting during the pandemic, a concept Trump and Republicans vigorously attacked as prone to corruption.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the months leading up to the general election, while a number of federal district courts upheld efforts by states to accommodate voting by mail, Trump-appointed appellate judges often cast the deciding vote to block them, according to Josh Douglas, a law professor at the University of Kentucky. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Justin Levitt, a former Justice Department official and a professor at Loyola Law School, said that while Trump\u2019s appointments have made the federal judiciary clearly more conservative, courts have been acting as they were designed to perform. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThat hasn’t changed in the post-election period, and there’s no reason to expect that it would,\u201d Levitt said. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Levitt said the courts have afforded the Trump campaign and other Republican plaintiffs ample opportunity to make their case that the election was marred by widespread fraud. \u00a0<\/p>\n “And at every stage, the litigants have failed to come forward with any reliable evidence that anything improper happened,” Levitt said in an interview with VOA. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Bibas\u2019\u00a0opinion on behalf of the 3rd Circuit came in response to a major lawsuit filed by the Trump campaign on November 9, two days after Biden was declared the presidential winner after securing Pennsylvania\u2019s 20 electoral votes. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The 89-page lawsuit<\/a> asked a federal district court to stop Pennsylvania from certifying the election, alleging the state had created \u201can illegal two-tiered voting system\u201d with the widespread use of voting by mail during the pandemic.\u00a0<\/p>\n After the Pennsylvania ruling, Trump\u2019s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and campaign senior legal adviser, Jenna Ellis, issued a statement on the 3rd Circuit\u2019s opinion.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe activist judicial machinery in Pennsylvania continues to cover up the allegations of massive fraud,\u201d they wrote. \u201cWe are very thankful to have had the opportunity to present proof and the facts to the PA state legislature. On to SCOTUS!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n While publicly making wild claims about election fraud, Giuliani offered no evidence and admitted in court on November 18 that “this is not a fraud case.” Three days later, Judge Matthew W. Brann of Federal District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, a Republican appointed by former Democratic President Barack Obama, tossed out the lawsuit, saying it lacked merit and was rife with \u201cspeculative accusations.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state,\u201d Brann, like Bibas, a former member of the Federalist Society, wrote in a 37-page opinion<\/a>. \u201cOur people, laws and institutions demand more.\u201d\u00a0The 3rd Circuit then upheld the decision. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n In two other cases in Pennsylvania, federal judges appointed by former Republican President George W. Bush denied a GOP effort to stop vote counting in Philadelphia and a separate attempt to throw out “cured” or corrected mail-in ballots.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n![\"Election](\"https:\/\/im-media.voltron.voanews.com\/Drupal\/01live-166\/styles\/sourced_737px_wide\/s3\/2020-11\/ap_wisconsin.jpg?itok=FsWQB-Xe\")
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