Contrary to the Washington Post's reporting, the Trump campaign is still eyeing nearly 700,000 ballots in Pennsylvania they believe were counted "in secret," the campaign explains.
"President Trump’s campaign on Sunday scrapped a major part of its federal lawsuit challenging the election results in Pennsylvania," the WaPo alleged Sunday night.
"Trump’s pared-down lawsuit now focuses on allegations that Republicans were illegally disadvantaged because some Democratic-leaning counties allowed voters to fix errors on their mail ballots," they add. "Counties have said this affected only a small number of votes."
The Trump campaign responded that the WaPo must not have even read the complaint.
This story is completely erroneous. Our lawsuit in Pennsylvania absolutely still makes an issue of the 682,479 mail-in and absentee ballots that were counted in secret.
— Tim Murtaugh (@TimMurtaugh) November 16, 2020
To write that we had scrapped that argument requires not reading the amended complaint. https://t.co/zShPcOjQH4
“We are still arguing that 682,479 ballots were counted illegally, in secret,” Tim Murtaugh, Trump 2020 communications director, said in a statement in Monday. “Our poll watchers were denied meaningful access to watch the vote counting and we still incorporate that claim in our complaint. Unfortunately, fake news activists rushed to print their clickbait headlines, apparently without even reading the lawsuit. That’s lazy journalism at best, but more likely intentionally misleading.”
After a Friday ruling by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in an unrelated case, the campaign decided to amend its lawsuit to rely on claims of violations of the Equal Protection Clause.
"The claim that 682,479 ballots were improperly processed and counted is still very much part of the suit," they explain.
The campaign then pinpoints the exact moment they mention the suspicious ballots.
"Paragraph 4 of the amended filing reads: 'Allegheny and Philadelphia Counties alone received and processed 682,479 mail-in and absentee ballots without review by the political parties and candidates," they explain. "These are unprecedented numbers in Pennsylvania’s elections history. Rather than engaging in an open and transparent process to give credibility to Pennsylvania’s brand-new voting system, the processes were hidden during the receipt, review, opening, and tabulation of those 682,479 votes.'"
Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani added that they simply made their cases "tighter."
"We simplified the suit so it is more focused and narrowed," he said.
The Trump campaign has set its sights on the Keystone State for quite some time because of the Secretary of State's history of anti-Trump bias. The campaign has also reported that one of their Pennsylvania attorneys has received "abusive e-mails, calls and physical and economic threats."