Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro on Wednesday decried Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit boosting President Trump’s long-shot attempts at overturning election results as “seditious” and built on an “absurd” foundation.
In a 43-page brief signed by Shapiro and six of his deputies, the battleground state’s attorney general argued that Paxton is bringing “only discredited allegations and conspiracy theories” in waging his last-ditch effort at Trump winning a second term.
“The Court should not abide this seditious abuse of the judicial process, and should send a clear and unmistakable signal that such abuse must never be replicated,” Shapiro said. “In support of such a request, Texas brings to the Court only discredited allegations and conspiracy theories that have no basis in fact.”
Shapiro added that “accepting Texas’s view would do violence to the Constitution and the Framers’ vision.”
Shapiro’s rebuke was issued as 106 House Republicans signed onto an amicus brief in support of the Texas lawsuit aimed at overturning the election results in the four battleground states — Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — that helped hand a win to President-elect Joe Biden. The other battleground states also offered blistering rebukes of the Texas lawsuit.
Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) spearheaded the effort to strong-arm his House GOP colleagues into signing the brief.
“This brief presents [our] concern as Members of Congress, shared by untold millions of their constituents, that the unconstitutional irregularities involved in the 2020 presidential election cast doubt upon its outcome and the integrity of the American system of elections,” the amicus brief signed by 106 GOP lawmakers said.
On Wednesday, the Trump campaign, as well 17 GOP attorneys general, formally indicated their support of Paxton’s lawsuit seeking to delay the certification of presidential electors in four battleground states Biden won.
The brief signed by Shapiro on Thursday was issued a day after he jabbed at Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) for agreeing to go along with Trump’s flailing attempts at overturning the election results through the Supreme Court.
“He has proven himself to be neither a genius in the law or a genius, frankly, in terms of an EQ. He is a sad sack,” Shapiro told CNN, following reports that Cruz had accepted Trump’s request to argue Paxton’s long shot lawsuit to invalidate Pennsylvania and other swing battleground states’ votes if it ends up before the Supreme Court.
