Wisconsin Justice Takes Trump Lawyer to Task

Suit 'smacks of racism,' she says
By Luke Roney,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 13, 2020 4:54 PM CST
Wisconsin Justice Says Trump Suit 'Smacks of Racism'
Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Jill Karofsky.   (John Hart/Wisconsin State Journal via AP)

A lawsuit from President Trump seeking to throw out hundreds of thousands of votes in Wisconsin "smacks of racism," a justice on that state's Supreme Court said during a Saturday hearing, Business Insider reports. Trump attorney Jim Troupis had asked the court to invalidate more then 221,000 absentee ballots, arguing that they were fraudulent, per the AP. The suit challenged votes in Wisconsin's liberal Milwaukee and Dane counties, which are home to the state's largest non-white populations. "What you want is for us to overturn this election so that your king can stay in power. That is so un-American," liberal Justice Jill Karofsky said.

No decision was reached during the 90-minute hearing, per HuffPost, which notes that the court did not seem likely to rule in Trump's favor after rejecting three earlier election lawsuits. Conservative justices "appeared to be sympathetic" to some of the Trump camp's claims, per the AP, but also voiced concerns about disqualifying ballots in just the two counties, when other counties followed the same procedures as Milwaukee and Dane. Biden won Wisconsin by a margin of about 0.6%—about 26,000 votes. Also on Saturday, US District Judge Brett Ludwig, who was appointed by Trump, shot down another suit seeking to overturn the Wisconsin results, the New York Times reports. The case "failed as a matter of law and fact," Ludwig said. (More Election 2020 stories.)

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