Dispute even before the election Trump team is already preparing for defeat
If Republican Donald Trump loses the presidential election in November, the USA is facing a legal tug-of-war. The Trump party is already making provisions.
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- Donald Trump's team is already preparing for defeat.
- Should their candidate Donald Trump lose, they are likely to pull out all the stops.
- Hundreds of lawyers are ready and dozens of petitions have already been filed in court.
Hundreds of lawyers and dozens of petitions in court: even before the first vote has been cast, the US Republicans are gearing up for a possible challenge to the presidential election in November. If their candidate Donald Trump loses, they are likely to pull out all the stops.
"If he loses, he will claim that he won. We don't even need to talk about that," says legal expert Rick Hasen from the University of California in Los Angeles about Trump. And: "If it looks like the last time," he adds, "I assume we'll see the same thing again."
In the election four years ago, Trump was defeated by his Democratic challenger Joe Biden, but declared that his victory had been taken away from him. His teams covered the courts with lawsuits and fanatical supporters did not shy away from violence. This was shockingly demonstrated during the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, when Biden was to be formally confirmed as the new president. The mob pushed past security forces, destroyed offices and cornered senators. Five people lost their lives.
Already more than a hundred lawsuits
Attempts by Trump's supporters to overturn the election result in court failed. More than 60 lawsuits have been unsuccessful. And all reviews and recounts in the states where Trump contested his defeat confirmed Biden's victory.
This year, the Republicans have already filed more than 100 lawsuits in which they criticize various aspects of the vote count as unlawful. This comes after they were repeatedly reprimanded by the courts four years ago for bringing complaints about the process after the count.
The current petitions brought before the courts tend not to be big guns and have no impact on most voters: "When you can spend so much money on litigation, things are litigated that matter less and less," says legal scholar Derek Muller of Notre Dame University in Indiana.
But should Trump lose the election, some of these pre-election disputes could come in handy. The former president has declared that he will only accept the result of the election if the process was "free and fair". He still claims that this was not the case four years ago. And he is addressing the electorate with statements like this: "The only way they can beat us is to cheat."
The issue is now taking up a lot of space among Republicans under the slogan "electoral integrity". According to the RNC, the party's organizing body, more than 165,000 volunteers will be on hand to monitor the elections in November.
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Trump's commitment to election integrity is aimed at "protecting every legal vote, containing threats to the election process, and securing the election," according to a statement from RNC spokeswoman Claire Zunk. "As Democrats continue their election interference against President Trump and the American people, we are standing up to their machinations and preparing for November."
Democrats are also gearing up
The Democrats are bracing themselves for whatever may come and are promoting "voter protection". They are countering the Republican lawsuits in court and are building a team with hundreds of lawyers and thousands of volunteers for November.
Trump and his allies have "schemed for four years to sow distrust in our elections and undermine our democracy so they can complain about injustice when they lose," said Democratic campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon. "But Democrats have been preparing for this moment for four years, too."
dpa