US President Donald Trump failed again to invalidate his election loss in Georgia and allow the state’s Republican-led legislature to declare him the winner — his latest courtroom defeat in a quixotic effort to remain in office, despite losing the vote on Nov. 3 last year.
US District Judge Mark Cohen in Atlanta on Tuesday denied Trump’s motion to “decertify” US president-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state.
During the hearing, for which there was no public dial-in access, Cohen said that the election was carried out validly under state law, and the court cannot tell the US Congress which US Electoral College votes it can count, a person familiar with the matter said.
The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by Trump on Thursday last week that rehashed claims of voter fraud made by his campaign and allies in dozens of other cases that were universally rejected by courts.
The latest lawsuit came just days before Trump held a controversial call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a defendant in the case, asking him to “find” just enough votes to overturn Biden’s win.
The hearing was held via videoconference for the involved lawyers and parties, but the public was not permitted to call in after Trump’s lawyer declined to allow such access.
The person familiar with the hearing, who asked not to be identified, provided details of the proceeding.
Cohen’s clerk confirmed that Trump’s motion was denied and said that a written order was to be issued later yesterday.
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Raffensperger told the judge in a court filing on Monday evening that Trump’s demands were “absurd,” and that his lawsuit was the result of a “manufactured crisis.”
Granting Trump’s request would “disenfranchise millions of Georgia voters” and “thrust the State of Georgia into constitutional chaos,” the officials said in the filing.
The person quoted Cohen in the hearing as saying that Trump waited too long to challenge Georgia’s rules for mail-in voting during the COVID-19 pandemic, which were established in March last year, and that his claims of rampant voter fraud should have been made earlier.
The person quoted Trump’s lawyer, Kurt Hilbert, as saying that the president failed to challenge Georgia’s March settlement agreement with Democrats over how the state would manage mail-in ballots during the pandemic because Trump did not know how the election would play out.
On the Chinese microblogging platform Sina Weibo, enthusiastic slackers share their tips: Fill up a thermos with whiskey, do planks or stretches in the work pantry at regular intervals, drink liters of water to prompt lots of trips to the toilet on work time, and, once there, spend time on social media or playing games on your phone. “Not working hard is everyone’s basic right,” one commenter wrote. “With or without legal protection, everyone has the right to not work hard.” Young Chinese people are pushing back against an engrained culture of overwork, and embracing a philosophy of laziness known as “touching
‘STUNNED’: With help from an official at the US Department of Justice, Donald Trump reportedly planned to oust the acting attorney general in a bid to overturn the election Former US president Donald Trump was at his Florida resort on Saturday, beginning post-presidency life while US President Joe Biden settled into the White House, but in Washington and beyond, the chaos of the 45th president’s final days in office continued to throw out damaging aftershocks. In yet another earth-shaking report, the New York Times said that Trump plotted with an official at the US Department of Justice to fire the acting attorney general, then force Georgia Republicans to overturn his defeat in that state. Meanwhile, former acting US secretary of defense Christopher Miller made an extraordinary admission, telling Vanity Fair that
Boeing set a target of designing and certifying its jetliners to fly on 100 percent sustainable fuels by 2030, amid rising pressure on planemakers to take climate change seriously. Regulators allow a 50-50 blend of sustainable and conventional fuels, and Boeing on Friday said it would work with authorities to raise the limit. Rival Airbus is considering another tack: a futuristic lineup of hydrogen-powered aircraft that would reach the skies by 2035. The aircraft manufacturers face growing public clamor to cut emissions in the aviation industry, which added more than 1 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in 2019, according to
Mongolian Prime Minister Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh on Thursday resigned following a protest over a hospital’s treatment of a new mother who tested positive for COVID-19. Khurelsukh, whose Mongolian People’s Party holds a strong majority in the parliament known as the State Great Khural, stepped down after accusing Mongolian President Khaltmaagiin Battulga of the Democratic Party of orchestrating a political crisis. A small protest broke out in the capital, Ulan Bator, on Wednesday after TV footage appeared of a woman who had just given birth being escorted in slippers and a thin robe from the maternity ward to a special wing for COVID-19 patients
RSS